Lesson 2 - 22 Aug 2011

There went the second week of school. I am still trying to get used to the schooling culture and coping with the workload. I guess such lifestyle change would take awhile to get used to, and tests my mental ability too.


The second lesson of TWC came and there was this slide which caught my eye :
Percentage of the World Economy by Region, 1 AD – 2050 AD.

I was surprised to note that most of the wealth started in India. I always thought the west were rich to begin with, so then they could start developing their countries and begin colonising other places. Subsequently the world went into some change, many of the wealth were distributed everywhere with the west taking the majority. Now the trend is shifting back to the east again.

One notable trend is Japan, with it’s declining economy caused mainly by the Earthquake and Nuclear disaster, will they be able to rise back to find themselves at the top in high-tech manufacturing especially with the close competition from Korea? Although Korea face hostility with their neighbouring country, I feel that  interventions from UN and USA helped to mitigate this. Just like when North Korea wanted to engage in Nuclear R&D, and have possession of potential WMD, they reached an agreement that they stop any development in the nuclear studies and exchange for economic aid.

Japan has a bigger problem now that disaster has struck, which caused ripple effects on their economy. Several key components in the iPad2 come from Japan, including the battery and the flash memory used to store music and video on the device, according to research firm IHS iSuppli. This can happen to a large extent as not only the iPad2 runs on batteries, every portable electronic gadgets require good quality batteries which Japan manufacturing plants are capable of producing. Looking at the world’s demand for iPad2 or even apple products, it would be terrible for Japan’s export if the manufacturing plant stops producing those goods permanently. They might find their way to their closest competitor which is Korea and force a dip in Japan’s economic power. Furthermore, Japan had been resistant in their policies, in which they thought those policies they used last time to gain economic power last time, is still relevant. The Japan leaders have since refused to see that the economic model has failed which now they have a government debt of 200% of their GDP. Competition, recovery from disaster and policies take time to have an effect and thus I feel that the predicted Japan’s economic power is relevant.

Another part of the lesson i wish to highlight is the : The Millennium Development Goals 

The MDG aspires to alleviate poverty as much as possible, ensure that the poor have food to eat, have a shelter above their heads, and to receive education. Such resources are very common in Singapore and it reminds me again not to take things for granted, and to always help people in any other way possible.

But what i felt was that these goals seemed far-fetched to me, especially in our world today where we face many problems, how are we going to cope with these problems faster than new problems can come up. With USA facing such a huge debt, and some European countries are not doing well, Japan is not doing well either. If the government in these places decide to cut spendings, certainly these humanitarian funds would be affected too because it is in the leader's interest to solve the fundamental problems in the countries. In many countries, they do not see that the social problems are the most important issue to solve. Often it is economic, political or military. If only there are global consensus to really help the people in need, and if only there are enough resources, enough outreach, then the world will really be a nicer place to live in. 

Can we imagine a day when we watch the news or read the newspapers, that there will be no crime reports, no signs of social problems, no economic issues or even no political issues?

Is it that the opportunity cost is greater to tackle the social problems first than the others?

If many countries are declining in economical standards, and that money is circulating around, there should be a country that is doing extremely well in that case. Are the countries that are doing well, making use of the money that they earn for the right cause? Or are they keeping quiet so that they will not be in the limelight and be obliged to contribute more to humanitarian efforts?

These are the issues that I sometimes wonder and hope that they could be discussed.

Overall, i rate the session 9/10. Not only I learnt from the professor, but I benefited too from the "guest speakers" which offered different and new insights about what they spoke. I think having different people to present a topic is good as everyone think differently, so we can offer views and ideas which everyone can learn or even share with others.

The only negative part : not enough time to discuss, very rushed :(