Great thinking !

And may I add that greed in turn attracts
men with no integrity,
men with little empathy for others,
men who are self serving,
men who are untrustworthy,
men with clouded vision,
and if put in place to manage a country, will do us in !

hehehe, people learn fast these days and know where the double-standards are when they see them. let’s pray hard for the country.

What’s so ironic is that this high difficulty in affording necessities is present even in a supposedly 1st world, developed country. A country’s success is not measured by a portion of its rich citizens, but by happiness & livelihood of all its citizens.

Money is just a means to get “stuff”. Some of those, like shelter, food, clothing, education, medical care, etc., are pretty much necessities. Can’t blame people for wanting more money when the price of these “stuff” are going inexorably up.

However, those who are already earning way more than enough to cover their basic needs (and have more than enough to last until the purchase of a coffin fall under the “need” category) should really know when enough is enough.

Does a person really need that much money? In the theory of yin-yang’s balance, when one man gets too rich, another man gets too poor due to unequal distribution.

What is the point of a governor whose role is to improve the lives of its citizens accumulating so much wealth despite being well-off enough already at the citizens’ expense?

The way to save humanity, especially dying ones due to poverty, is to dispel the illusions of blind greed & pursue for money caused by the evolution of society.

I have a feeling this will happen in a few centuries. In their time, people disagreed with Charles Darwin & Socrates. A few centuries later, humankind begins to see the light in their wisdom.

Quite obviously, I am blatantly wishing to be a great philosopher even if it’s after my death. I would rather lead a normal life now & be able to benefit mankind in the future even after my death with my philosophy than be rich & powerful now at the expense of others & be hated by mankind even after my death.

I agree with your post, as I am incline to take the view that people who are strongly motivated by money ie. minus that component, they will decline the job, are driven by the need for power, and the need to achieve over others.
Such people are focused solely on performance that benefits themself and their direct employer; often at the expense of the bigger community.
For these people, the wellbeing of others outside their exclusive circle are irrelevant.
This is an empirical fact from psychological researches.

Would any citizen allow this? I dare to say, almost none of the citizens would allow this. & yet, there’s not a thing we could do to stop the government from keeping them in position & siphoning lots of money, much to our annoyance.

This shows the government has ABSOLUTE control over the country & its people. & as Carlito would say, “That’s not cool.”

Their justification is to “attract talent to stay in the government”. But methinks shouldn’t the desire to serve the country BE AN INTRINSIC (come from within) DESIRE? Shouldn’t one love the country so much, that one desires to make the country better?

So, if all the government can say is that paying big money will help retain talent, then we can all safely assume that the government DOES NOT WANT TO BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND NEEDS MONEY TO KEEP THEM THERE.

Thus, the article holds true. Money attracts greedy talent. Talent indeed, but greedy nonetheless.

1. its fundamentally flawed to say money DOES NOT Attract talent. The question is what kind of talent it attracts.

2. ‘it merely attracts greed’ : merely = only. that again is fundamentally flawed.

but message understooded. pardon me singlish. my englan not strong.

Haiz…

The next part is really my reflection (you are welcome to disagree, but I invite you to consider my line of thought).
In the early days, Singapore canvassed hard to bring in manufacturing facilities from mncs, while having smes at the background. The strategy had borned out well. I am not a fan of LKY. I also do not think he is scholar material, and do not agree with all policies he set, but I credit him for the economic stability these mncs brought. And then, we tried to grow the services industries of major professions (to me, this included the civil service), ………. nothing wrong, but the rate we tried to grow them (and I had been in a service industry too), outpaced the manufacturing piece by both productivity and rewards.
As a result, our cost base went higher and higher, till the manufacturing mncs were beginning to take notice. Of course, at the same time, you will normally hear of people moving from manufacturing to service industries, but not the other way round. One by one, these mncs migrated to China, India, Vietnam etc. Then even for many mncs which had not set foot here, they no longer put Singapore under consideration when looking for an Asia Pacific manufacturing headquarters.
I am sure we had more than just a few highly paid scholars as policy makers then, but we were slow or even ineffective in arresting the manufacturing exodus…. it is my view that manufacturing is the key engine of any economic growth. Once you have this service industry that outpaced the manufacturing one by rewards but not productivity and real economic values (i think both greed and ambitions are mixed here), and at the same time the manufacturing piece declines at a substantial rate, it’s a sure time-bomb formula.
The reason is because only manufacturing generates real products, and the rest are ‘parasitic industries’. In the same vein, this happened to US, and today, some even joked that the most prominent thing US is exporting is their greenback. I cannot be sure policy makers are still trying to revive manufacturing locally. Even if this were the case, it is hard to make a strong business case to prospective parties. At the end, policy makers may keep asking us not to jack up our cost bases, but the switching costs of external investments will remain high for them to come/ return to Singapore.

Mankind has evolved a great deal since then. They learnt that humankind benefit from being in a group. These groups give rise to tribes & countries.

Yesterday’s hunting, resource-gathering & building has turned into today’s working. You work for $ to buy food which keeps you alive & buy furniture & materials to make your life more comfortable & convenient.

Mankind’s way of living has always been evolving. From small, dispersed tribes to major countries. From hunting & resource-gathering to working for $ which can pay for the spoils.

At the same time, many new concepts have been invented or discovered by mankind, some good, some bad. Good ones include invention of electricity & refrigeration. They aid human’s convenience & comfort. Bad ones include the glorification of cigarettes in mid 20th century & definitely, the over-glorification of $ in modern society.

Modern society makes you believe that you always need more $ no matter what. It’s a product of social evolution. If you can see the over-glorification of $ in its true light, as a product of social evolution, you can choose not be trapped in society’s workings.

The government is just one of the bodies which is trapped in this illusion perpetuated by society that you always need more $. Why would you need so much $ for anyway? You are well-fed, you can afford all the conveniences & comfort in life.

Don’t get me wrong. Money is important in life. You need money to live, & definitely need some backup in the form of savings. But if one is well-fed & comfortable enough, one should get blinded into chasing more & more dollars. The blind desire is simply perpetuated by modern society. See it for what it really is!