During a golf session with a friend over the weekend, we have a brief but interesting discussion about bureaucracy in the government.

Peter Drucker, in his book Managing the Next Society noted that Japanese have encountered 3 economic crisis: 1940s unemployment, 1960 retail inefficiency and 1980s recession. What is interesting is that the government overcome the first two by doing preciesly nothing. Yet, ignoring past wisdom, they poured huge sum of public funds to stimulate economy in 80s which only results in gross failure.Global economy goes up and down in cycle. In a down cycle, there is always incredible public pressure for the government to do something to “stimulate’ economy growth. What most forget or dont realize is that economy crisis resulted from global downturn can only be resolve by global economy itself, which is beyond any government influence. (Of course, if the rest of the world is growing whereas you are not, then perhaps you should relook at your policy).

Thus, in the face of public pressure, bureaucracy is one of the most powerful weapon of procasatination, of doing preciesly nothing. Or if anything is done, in insignificant manner.

That comes to the point which kicks start the discussion: the 3% CPF cut. The cut is too small to have any impact on the economy yet big enough to send a pro-business message to the world. A perfect example of doing something yet nothing…