Apart from the obvious point that the government doesn’t give a shit about people. Tyler Cowen explains the sociological impact of a welfare state:

Some societies, such as in East Asia, use the family to pick up a greater share of income and health risks. I doubt if the highly mobile United States could do the same, but even so this option is costly. Most of all, the welfare state liberates the productive and the creative from their sometimes burdensome family ties. (Emphasis Cowen’s.) The welfare state is the Randian’s secret dream, and that is what clinches the case for a government safety net.

In other words, the welfare state destroys Asian Values ™. Come to think of it, our wise leaders have made this point before. They leave out the part about inhibiting productivity and creativity, of course.

Might it be that the lack of a safety net in Singapore contributes to its cultural stagnation? It is undeniable that family ties are a burden on those who want to pursue their dreams. I know a depressing number of people who reined in their dreams for family reasons.

A disturbing comment on Agagooga’s post on the Cash Harvest Cult:

I was browsing through the blogspot on a random & bang, I hit your blog. I’m impressed by your analytical knowledge. This article has indeed opened my eyes. I’m actually an ex-member from CHC. The link which you had put up taught me alot more about satan’s signs. It brought me back to one of CHC’s service where the whole congregation was told to make the “Devil’s Sign” (resembled the one shown in your link) when Sun Ho was up the stage singing. But this round, it involved 2 different signs. I wonder if you have more information about it. I’m pretty curious. [Right Hand: Open Palm face out. Left Hand: “Devil’s Sign”] Thank God, I’m out of CHC. It’s a pretty weird feeling being there. Somehow, I felt I wasn’t myself. Somehow, felt being “brainwashed”. When it comes to offering time, there was always a power to push me to dump in all my $$$ to the point that I had to starve myself for the next few weeks to a month. At church, everyone seems to love you so much, but when you bump into them somewhere in the streets, they treat you like a total strangers. I even had frightening encounters where I was sexually harrassed by the male members. Several times being pushed down on bed by 2 different “brothers”. One succeded by popping sleeping pills into me. When I woke up, I can’t remembered anything except seeing myself naked. At the point, I was still attending their church. I can’t explain why. It’s only until I left them, then did I realised the shame that I was being “rape”. But it had been so long, I don’t see on how I could make a police report. Since I’ve left CHC, I'’ve “recuperated” pretty well…Life’s back to normal…Continue to provide those informative writeup. Thanks!!!

So said Naive on Mar 01 2007, 04:03 pm

The language used makes this very believable. On the other hand, it is not inconceivable that this could be fabricated by someone clever enough to be able to imitate a “naive”, mentally challenged person.

Aaron opines that breaking scholarship bonds is immoral. I say opines, because he has basically provided no argument for that.

We can agree that if breaking bonds is immoral, it is because it involves breaking a promise. The big gap in Aaron’s post, the gap which renders it an opinion rather than an argument, is that he has not shown that there is such a promise involved. From his analogy with adultery, we can take it that he considers the promise one of unconditional commitment to the scholarship agency. What he has to show, therefore, is that, even though the legal agreement is clearly conditional, there exists an implicit agreement between the scholar and the agency that the commitment is unconditional. Now, he may think that there should be such an agreement, but all that is relevant is whether there is such an agreement, between real scholars and real scholarship agencies (not those in Aaron’s ideal world). If there is no such promise, then it is simply impossible for the scholar to violate the promise, and hence we cannot say that he/she is immoral because he/she violates that promise.

Until evidence is offered to show that real scholars and real scholarship agencies have a voluntary, implicit agreement that the declaration of commitment by the scholars is unconditional, Aaron has no justification for thinking that breaking bonds is immoral because it violates a preexisting agreement (though perhaps it is immoral for other reasons).

As I stated in the comments in Aaron’s post, I am open to the idea that breaking bonds is immoral for reasons other than that it violates a promise, but I’m not convinced there is a robust argument for that assertion either.

In response to my comment that pretending the scholar who allegedly had a mental breakdown did not exist was distasteful, Philip Yeo, to his credit, has revealed the facts of the case in the comments on Aaron Ng’s blog.

Another significant, positive, development: The offending remarks on Acidflask’s old blog have also finally been pinpointed. Perhaps, despite the vulgarities that were flying about on e pur si muove, this was not an entirely futile exercise in communicating with a government figure.