The thing that I really, really love to do is to sit down at 7-11 while sipping some beers and coffee and feasting some potato chips with my friends like By Charles and Nanang Nurbuat while playing Cap Sa. But often we talk a lot about politics, religion, and philosophy in raw level – we don't know much about political affairs nor philosophical concepts, but we could discuss all night long on them.
One thing that ever discussed on was about atheism. Had been reading Jon Meacham's article on Newsweek "The End of Christian America", I found some interesting facts. The number of American people who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990 from 8 to 15 percents. Meanwhile, according to American Religious Identification Survey, the number of people are willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic since 1990-2009 has been rising nearly fourfold from 1 million to roughly 3.6 millions. This is needless to say, quite shocking me although I'm a liberal person, and I believe, this is much to dismay religious conservatives who long to see their faith to be expressed and conserved in public life. What phenomenon is happening right now? And what causes it?
Some people says we're now entering what is so-called post-religion era. That doesn't necessarily mean our God is dead (as Friedrich Nietzsche said), but surely our God has lost His grips on our socio-political circumstances than any other time in recent memories. Some say, religions lose on the issues of same sex marriage, gender re-assignment, euthanasia, cloning, and abortion (by the way, Indonesia allows abortion, too, although it's only for urgent medical reason and rape victim, see Indonesian Health bill). I saw that this phenomenon doesn't only occur in secular countries, but also in conservative religion-based countries, albeit the effect on the latter isn't as paramount as the former.
I've been in and out of atheist internet forums and I found a lot of mockeries, blasphemies, and intense debates about so many things: morality, history of religion, dispute about the facts in Qur'an, Bible, and Talmud, concept of Supreme Being, and one thing that is never left, creationism vs evolution. Both religious and atheism brought so many facts, and, for me, neither side is getting a clear winning nor losing.
So what is the grand line? I found that atheists seek one thing: indisputable empirical prove that God is exist, underline on indisputable and empirical. As what the prominent figure of atheism, Thomas H. Huxley said, "The deepest sin against human mind is to believe things without evidence." I asked someone on the forum about his decision to become an atheist, he replied, "God didn't give me enough reason to believe." Atheist believe human doesn't need God to live. They say religions are delusional and miracles can be explained in simple science. They argue that we don't need God to become a person with morality, because every person is born with the desire to order. They also associate God with "Invisible Pink Unicorn", imaginary, but has attributes (i. e. pink = God's attribute: great, glorious, etc.), and yet the attributes and existence of such thing cannot be proven or dis-proven since it's invisible. They also refuse to believe that God is exist due to the circular logic (i. e.: How do we know that God is exist? Because holy book told us so. Then how do we know that holy book is right? Because it is from God). And many more historical facts and philosophical arguments that are too long to be written here.
But why does their number keep on increasing? I, frankly, don't understand. As a child who has been raised in conservative family, I found that religion education or indoctrination is still strong enough, and even on the liberal one. If it's failed, there are still religion subject on schools, preaching on churches, mosques, synagogues, and even on the TV.
Another Concern
Another problem that corners religion is when religion separates people instead of connecting it (the term "religion" is derived from Latin phrase re + ligare which means "to bind, to fasten"). When religion becomes a justification to kill other people, when religion is in behind of many conflicts and wars, and when religion separates two people who love each other make God, through the eyes of religion, nowadays becoming an "alien". I may be representing one of the many young people who are brave enough to question God and religion. Nowadays, religion differences are almost like a curse. Each religious group tried to look at and approach God with its own definition of truth, with its point of view, since religions are multi-interpretative. Religious fundamentalism on one spectrum is the perspective of a certain believe/religion that considers that their own definitive perspective is the sole "truth" and absolute. But then again, problems arise when these fundamentalies claim that the "other" approaches and views of God, are considered deviant or wrong. What happens next is the conflict: Ambon, between Christian-Islam; Jerusalem, between Jew-Islam; Iraq, between Sunni-Shia; Ireland, between Protestant-Catholic; India, between Islam-Hinduism; and so forth. Too many blood spilled, God's name claims so much death tolls and not to mention raises a stereotype towards certain religion that is regarded as terrorists.
A lot of people be anxious of religions, precisely the anxiety felt by Friedrich Nietzsche years ago, as what he said, "god is dead! god is dead! And we all killed him...." (Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet!). Nietzsche had "killed" a metaphysical god. He was a true atheist. But this, too, what is feared by a lot of people when they think, "This world has too many religions. This world has too many gods already!" Was it God's fault? Or human's? Or both? Or whose fault?
Seeking for Truth
So, what is truth? Whose "God" is right? Truth, taken in historical perspective, social, and cultural context, describe something that we caught or learned. Truth is indeed very fragmentary, depends on how we are shaped by the various fragments, ranging from cultural to social environment.
Immanuel Kant called this as "Das Ding an Sich", that truth is in itself, we'll never know. Humans have limitations in seeing the whole reality. When monotheism was born, many hope that monotheism can overcome the quibble on the question of classical metaphysics, paganism, or "primitive" religions. Emmanuel Levinas with his "concept of one God"-Judaism, has placed the Abrahamic monotheism religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) as benchmarks for the paradigm of faith. Levinas criticized Martin Heidegger's point of view that reminds us of the "Existence" in traditional metaphysics. "Existence" is not always a substantial God(s), but "Existence" is there, before we even thought. "Existence" is a reflective, which implies the power of the heart, grace, and the personal faith.
When religion becomes large, it grows like a rigid structure, far beyond the meaning of "Existence". Glorious mosques, churches, temples, and synagogues, and all the religion's gleaming, have taken quiet spaces in the recesses of meditation. Meaning of "Existence" has shifted to the prevaricating over differences between these and those. At that time, religion was no more than just about who is right and who is wrong. So, I think, we are "surplus" in "declaring the acquisition" of God, yet also "deficit" in terms of understanding meaning of God. Relationship between God and religion is now shifted only to be transactional matters, to fulfill the "spiritual needs" of people, to tranquil them in a bliss of joy, that's it. No wonder Karl Marx called religion as "the opiate". He regarded religion as the opiate which can make people "drunk" and forget the reality of life. Although, there are people who in their praise and worship, and in their contemplation, able to understand the meaning of God.
And in the end the question left is just: "Are we really able to fully understand and believe our God and the fact that we are created differently? And if we are, will we be able to stop equivocating and hyper-criticizing about the differences, and worship Him together with our respective methods?"
Meanwhile, let me defined my faith for myself. I don't need for myself indisputable empirical evidence to believe in God, even though there are a lot of facts about the truth of religion and the existence of God provided by the religious people on the forum, and through my own historical and scientific apologetic research. For me, God is there on the face of those who were crucified, and on the martyrs, and on those who died and sacrificed their everything for justice, truth, and morality. God is there on the person who is not only alive but also conscientious, who is on his standing, sitting, or lying down, seeing and contemplating the meaning and face of God, everywhere, every time. I see God on them.
Do you see God?
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
The Women Psych: Illusory Tragedy of the Commons
This is the second post in regards of my psychological quasi-research. This is the first one.
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Ever wondering why some bastards are so easy to get the girls, despite logically speaking, they are not good long term partners? Women, with their initial role of nurture, are evolutionarily wired with their emotional side more dominant. That's why women, in overall, are more skilled at decoding emotion using non-verbal cues including facial expression, tone of voice, and posture. But that also what makes (some) women are easily to be subdued by it. They (some of them, once again) are easily attracted to badboys who can bring them into some "emotional roller-coaster." Badboys, with their carefree nature, adventurous life, good communication skill, and aura of leadership, are surely more attractive than usual, face-in-the-crowd nice guys, despite maybe these nice guys are what constitutes a good last-for-life partners. It is animal magnetism, which of course does not address emotional maturity, love (not lust) and bonding, nor does animal magnetism apply to a woman's process of qualifying a man for character maturity as a potential lasting, committed mate or potential father.
What makes it worse, some nice guys just don't know how to make themselves attractive. They lavish woman they love with gifts, etc, in which it's more likely to be failed (unless the woman has some feeling with the man beforehand). Why?
First, that woman thinks that there is no need to escalate the relationship (no need to be girlfriend, with the risk of breaking up the relationship) to get the facilities.
Second, it's certainly boring, especially for attractive girls with lots of fans around them who do thing that's exactly the same, giving the woman lots of gifts. That treatment will not make this nice guy to stand out and have better chance to make a move.
This leads to a problem of an illusory tragedy of the commons, in which these poor nice guys thinks that relatively valuable women (either for their beauty, intelligence, sexiness, what say you) are difficult to get.
The Handicap Principle.
But, should we live a badboy lifestyle just to be able to get around with girls? No. You just have to mimic their impressions. Badboy is like the alpha-male gorilla. They are dominated by these primitive, masculine, animal instincts. Their robust masculinity is the ultimate attractor for women. In short, they are free men: free to express their opinions, emotions, and identity. They show a strong and leadership quality, even if they're not. Then, you should adopt that style, be communicative, flirty, able to take women down in cocky jerk jokes, hard-headed, decisive, adventurous, and show your high values.
Building a rapport.
Rapport is a term used to describe, in common terms, that two or more people feel in sync, or in short, chemistry. This is very useful to increase your receptivity, especially when you're about to approach a stranger with no prior connection. There are some techniques on the internet where you can learn canned opener, that is a sentence that you can memorize to open up conversation, directly or indirectly. But I prefer a more customized, situational one, but you have to be communicative or used to have a lot of conversations with random strangers. After you open up and have some conversations with her and want to escalate your chat further into a date, you have to look for the indicators of interest, then I assume you know what to do next.
How to Open Up
A lot of people are afraid to approach strangers, but the solution for this is quite simple. You don't need some motivational speeches from Mario Teguh to overcome this anxiety. You just have to approach as many strangers as possible. Feel the fear, go approach anyway, act nervously and stupid, be rejected (maybe), evaluate and learn from your mistake (did I become too creepy?) and become better at tackling your fear and at approaching.
Evolving Yourself
Your differences from badboy, supposed to lie on your genuine quality as a man. That's why aside from your outer characters of a badboy (that only become your clothes), you have to grow in emotional maturity, diplomacy (charisma), courtesy, character (confidence, belief in greater cause, fun and positive mental attitude, caring, etc, etc), and emotional skills of friendship, love, bonding, and mood management. You have to have wide networks and friends (in real life, not Facebook friends) as well.
And in the end, you'll become a man who's having a solid masculinity yet the ability to express friendly emotions that are heartfelt, genuine and real. You will not be boring in the eyes of girls, yet you are indeed suitable to be her long time partner.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever wondering why some bastards are so easy to get the girls, despite logically speaking, they are not good long term partners? Women, with their initial role of nurture, are evolutionarily wired with their emotional side more dominant. That's why women, in overall, are more skilled at decoding emotion using non-verbal cues including facial expression, tone of voice, and posture. But that also what makes (some) women are easily to be subdued by it. They (some of them, once again) are easily attracted to badboys who can bring them into some "emotional roller-coaster." Badboys, with their carefree nature, adventurous life, good communication skill, and aura of leadership, are surely more attractive than usual, face-in-the-crowd nice guys, despite maybe these nice guys are what constitutes a good last-for-life partners. It is animal magnetism, which of course does not address emotional maturity, love (not lust) and bonding, nor does animal magnetism apply to a woman's process of qualifying a man for character maturity as a potential lasting, committed mate or potential father.
What makes it worse, some nice guys just don't know how to make themselves attractive. They lavish woman they love with gifts, etc, in which it's more likely to be failed (unless the woman has some feeling with the man beforehand). Why?
First, that woman thinks that there is no need to escalate the relationship (no need to be girlfriend, with the risk of breaking up the relationship) to get the facilities.
Second, it's certainly boring, especially for attractive girls with lots of fans around them who do thing that's exactly the same, giving the woman lots of gifts. That treatment will not make this nice guy to stand out and have better chance to make a move.
This leads to a problem of an illusory tragedy of the commons, in which these poor nice guys thinks that relatively valuable women (either for their beauty, intelligence, sexiness, what say you) are difficult to get.
The Handicap Principle.
But, should we live a badboy lifestyle just to be able to get around with girls? No. You just have to mimic their impressions. Badboy is like the alpha-male gorilla. They are dominated by these primitive, masculine, animal instincts. Their robust masculinity is the ultimate attractor for women. In short, they are free men: free to express their opinions, emotions, and identity. They show a strong and leadership quality, even if they're not. Then, you should adopt that style, be communicative, flirty, able to take women down in cocky jerk jokes, hard-headed, decisive, adventurous, and show your high values.
Building a rapport.
Rapport is a term used to describe, in common terms, that two or more people feel in sync, or in short, chemistry. This is very useful to increase your receptivity, especially when you're about to approach a stranger with no prior connection. There are some techniques on the internet where you can learn canned opener, that is a sentence that you can memorize to open up conversation, directly or indirectly. But I prefer a more customized, situational one, but you have to be communicative or used to have a lot of conversations with random strangers. After you open up and have some conversations with her and want to escalate your chat further into a date, you have to look for the indicators of interest, then I assume you know what to do next.
How to Open Up
A lot of people are afraid to approach strangers, but the solution for this is quite simple. You don't need some motivational speeches from Mario Teguh to overcome this anxiety. You just have to approach as many strangers as possible. Feel the fear, go approach anyway, act nervously and stupid, be rejected (maybe), evaluate and learn from your mistake (did I become too creepy?) and become better at tackling your fear and at approaching.
Evolving Yourself
Your differences from badboy, supposed to lie on your genuine quality as a man. That's why aside from your outer characters of a badboy (that only become your clothes), you have to grow in emotional maturity, diplomacy (charisma), courtesy, character (confidence, belief in greater cause, fun and positive mental attitude, caring, etc, etc), and emotional skills of friendship, love, bonding, and mood management. You have to have wide networks and friends (in real life, not Facebook friends) as well.
And in the end, you'll become a man who's having a solid masculinity yet the ability to express friendly emotions that are heartfelt, genuine and real. You will not be boring in the eyes of girls, yet you are indeed suitable to be her long time partner.
The Women Psych: Stockholm Syndrome
In this post, I’m gonna talk about love. But not love in galau-ish sense. This is more into the psychology of women. There will be two parts. Part 1 will talk about how women can be stuck in abusive relationship. Part 2 will talk about how the bastards can get the girls :P. Go read!
Have you observed, or even experienced it by yourself, an abusive relationship? In which the woman suffered a lot of verbal, psychological, and even physical abuses? Yet despite after a lot of advices, still couldn’t let go her boyfriend. She even forgave him, and blamed friends and families, saying that they couldn’t understand her feelings? You might wonder how could this possibly happen. But yes, this is possible to happen. This is called Stockholm syndrome.
Stockholm syndrome is a paradoxical psychological phenomenon in which the victim shows affection and emotional attachment to the abuser. The name Stockholm syndrome comes from a robbery that took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1979, in which the robbers took bank workers as hostages for 5 days long. After released, they had attachments to the robbers and even defended their actions.
How can Stockholm syndrome shape a form of attachment? Firstly, the existence of threat and abuse. Verbal, mental, psychological, and physical abuses will degrade the victim’s confidence, creating a sense of helplessness. Threat will prevent the victim to report the abuser or get away from the relationship, even more if the abuser tells the victim that he “can’t live without her” and will commit suicide if the victim leaves.
Secondly, isolation and alienation. Be it physical, mental, or emotional. The abuser becomes so possessive and obsessive then creates a barrier for the victim to socialize. For instance, the abuser demands all the victim’s social networking passwords (Facebook, Twitter, Y!M, etc) or obsessive checking to the victim’s cell phone message inbox, or prohibition to contact someone, be it a male coworker, or male boss, or even male friend. This isolation will further dissociate the victim from her surrounding, and will worsen the sense of helplessness.
Thirdly, a form of compassion or love that is sometimes shown by the abuser. Because the victim is getting used from the pain and abuses, she becomes so “addicted” in waiting when the good thing will come. When this “good thing” is given by the abuser, this becomes something that’s so precious for the victim, creating false sense of hope that the abuser will change into someone better.
These all accumulate into helplessness and shame that will make the victim reluctant to tell to others, especially when her social life is so isolated by the abuser. The victim will then close herself from others and reject those who are trying to help her. She will feel that no one understands her feelings. This will be fatal, because the victim will gradually accept that “this is her fate”, and that the abuser is the only one that understands her. This will create an emotional addiction and she will think that this is “love.”
How to get out from such Stockholm syndrome? Well, for the victim, it requires a lot of effort. Usually the victim will realize that this is a destructive relationship after it’s too late, after the abuser almost kills her life or that the torture is so severe that it slap her back into the reality. As a friend, if you know this, it’s better to report to the police (because it constitutes a domestic violence), parents, and also psychiatrist (because this will leave the victim with deep emotional scar, even make the victim become too paranoid to start a new relationship)
But prevention is always better, right? Here is some guidance to know whether your current boyfriend will be a potential abuser:
Blamer: the one who blames his negative feelings or bad luck to someone/something else. Some of them are just good in seducing and making you feels good by comparing you to other person (“my stupid bitchy ex girlfriend”). You will come to think that what he needs is love from a good woman that you’ll provide. But beware; when you get closer to him, you’ll be the one that is blamed by him most of the time.
Entitlement: the one who always thinks that he is special and deserves special consideration/treatment. This type of person is highly egoistical and easily offended if he doesn’t get what he wants or what people should do to him. He will love to point out that he is smart and no one should disagree with him. He will have a very high self-esteem, a predatory self-esteem, and he will feel good if he succeeds in belittling others. The one who always thinks that life is unfair. This type of person is locked to his own sense of perspective, that he will neglect the rights and perspective of others, including his girlfriend.
Whiner: this type of person will focus on small mistake and exaggerate it. Be it the food in restaurant that tastes bad or that male friend who innocently ask you about how is your life currently. He will always complain about this and bring these little mistakes up every time you have a quarrel.
Sarcasm: that is directed to you, his girlfriend! Hostile sarcasm often means to devalue the girlfriend, to shake her confidence, and to get temporary ego gain to make his position in relationship higher than you.
Deceitful: the one who loves to lie, unintentionally or intentionally.
Controlling: if he starts defining boundaries over with whom you should go, urging you to block some of your male friends in Facebook, etc. That is.
If you feel that your boyfriend fulfills some, if not most or all the criteria, then be careful, maybe, at some point in the future you might fall into this Stockholm syndrome.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Some Objections to Some Objections
When I happen to read a post on an online forum regarding the government plan to launch tax canvassing/tax census, I can't help but pondering: why they (particularly youths) are becoming so fatalistic and hostile towards every government plans. Indeed, after Gayus case, public displayed resentment towards tax officers and Directorate General of Tax in general (despite its bureaucracy reform program). But then again without tax, this country will surely crippled, and if we just sit down and think clearly, some rational discourses are more healthy than just flaming and trolling on the commentary section.
In this post, I am not going to give commentary on the tax canvassing program, but more into some objections threw by commenter in the forum aforementioned.
First objection is about how death penalty for corruptors is more preferable to solve the problem of government accountability. My objection, (which was also posted on that forum, go find it which one), is that a) China that condones capital punishments for corruptors flunked its rank from 72 in 2008 to 79 in 2009 in world's Corruption Perception Index, albeit performed slightly better to be number 78 in 2010. And b) 3 cleanest countries in this world (Denmark, New Zealand, and Singapore) do not have death penalty in their judicial systems. What does it show? Looking on its performance in China during these recent years, the existence of death penalty isn't giving drastic betterment (despite its drastic shock element) in China's CPI rank (not to mention its fall in 2009), yet then again government accountability can be achieved not necessarily via such terrifying measure if we take a look on the top 3 countries.
Yet, if we take a look into the sense of justice according what is actually demanded by society (if retributive justice is indeed deemed as the oh so majestic justice), it just doesn't make sense. How could you put number on human's life? Let's say the law states death as maximum sentence for corruption that is more than 1 billion rupiah, how could the one who do corruption of 999 millions rupiah be exempted from death despite essentially inflict same level of damage? But if the law doesn't state exact number for the money corrupted, then what constitute a maximum damage in corruption case? Putting numbers on human life, in this case, is not just at all. If you steal something, you don't need to die, you just need (for instance) to give your money back. Why?
a) It's more tangible
b) It's retributively more just (after all, what is needed for society is the money, not the corruptor's death)
c) In the sense of giving deterrent effect, it also gives deterrent effect, as psychologically people have emotional attachment to money (who wants to be deprived of his money?)
But, aside from that, just by putting them 15 years in jail, deprive them from temporary freedom of movement and communication to family, why wouldn't people be afraid of that?
On the other hand, one should not undermine the accountability measure that Indonesia has right now. Inside Directorate General of Tax, they have Directorate of Internal Compliance and Transformation of Apparatus Resources (Direktorat Kepatuhan Internal dan Transformasi Sumber Daya Aparatur/KITSDA) where you can post complaints for any deviant conduct by tax officers. Or Kring Pajak 500200, where you can do the same thing. Inside Ministry of Finance, there are two internal auditor bodies, Inspectorate General (Inspektorat Jendral/Itjen) and State Development and Finance Surveillance Agency (Badan Pengawasan Keuangan dan Pembangunan/BPKP). Outside from Ministry of Finance, we have Supreme Audit Body (Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan/BPK), Taxation Supervisory Committee (Komite Pengawas Perpajakan) and NGOs like Transparency International or Indonesia Corruption Watch.
Second thing I'd like to object was the notion that government that has big chunk of its revenue from tax is a vile government and akin to some gangsters or so, thus we need to maximize export import instead.
I can't believe that although the commenter said he knew economic concept, he didn't knew that export import is not a part from government revenue. Ex-im is part of GDP, and done by private sectors (yet government can get tax from that). Contrary from USA that fulfills 2,17 trillion dollar from its need of 3,87 trillion spending from tax (and the rest from loans), we have alternative sources of income that is Penerimaan Negara Bukan Pajak/PNBP (non-tax revenues) which accounted for 21,6% of our budget (as per 2010). But if he was indeed to think about the concept of revenue sharing from state owned enterprises or revenue from natural resources that are included in PNBP (that in their operation might be exporting something, like in mining companies) maximizing them is not enough to support government budget (not to mention, mining activities are exploitative and unsustainable), as some state owned companies, in fact, are wasting budget and inefficient.
But, let's take a look, does tax in Indonesia restrains us so much? If we use the parameter of tax to GDP ratio (portion of domestic products that is taxed), Indonesia is quite low by accounting for only 11%, compared to Germany (40,6%), France (46,1%), US (26,9%), and UK (39%). If we use the parameter of fiscal freedom used by Heritage Foundation, Indonesia, once again, fares better by having score of 83,0 compared to Germany (58,5), France (52,3), United Kingdom (52,0) and United States (68,3). If we compare Indonesia from income tax tariff to Germany, on the personal income tax, the highest rate of personal income in Indonesia is 30% compared to Germany of 41% and 45%. On corporate income, our tax tariff is 25% (on fiscal year 2010 onwards) not to mention its facility (article 31 E of Indonesian Income Tax Act) of 50% tax cut for companies with gross circulation of 50 billion rupiah and below and taxable income of 4,8 billion rupiah and below. Germany? 29,6% on average.
This is by no mean I'm supporting corruption or whatever. Corruption is an abhorrent act, and it remains so, but killing the perpetrator is unnecessary to be done. On the other hand, we should be grateful (now) that Indonesia is not a gangster government, contrary to what people may perceive.
In this post, I am not going to give commentary on the tax canvassing program, but more into some objections threw by commenter in the forum aforementioned.
First objection is about how death penalty for corruptors is more preferable to solve the problem of government accountability. My objection, (which was also posted on that forum, go find it which one), is that a) China that condones capital punishments for corruptors flunked its rank from 72 in 2008 to 79 in 2009 in world's Corruption Perception Index, albeit performed slightly better to be number 78 in 2010. And b) 3 cleanest countries in this world (Denmark, New Zealand, and Singapore) do not have death penalty in their judicial systems. What does it show? Looking on its performance in China during these recent years, the existence of death penalty isn't giving drastic betterment (despite its drastic shock element) in China's CPI rank (not to mention its fall in 2009), yet then again government accountability can be achieved not necessarily via such terrifying measure if we take a look on the top 3 countries.
Yet, if we take a look into the sense of justice according what is actually demanded by society (if retributive justice is indeed deemed as the oh so majestic justice), it just doesn't make sense. How could you put number on human's life? Let's say the law states death as maximum sentence for corruption that is more than 1 billion rupiah, how could the one who do corruption of 999 millions rupiah be exempted from death despite essentially inflict same level of damage? But if the law doesn't state exact number for the money corrupted, then what constitute a maximum damage in corruption case? Putting numbers on human life, in this case, is not just at all. If you steal something, you don't need to die, you just need (for instance) to give your money back. Why?
a) It's more tangible
b) It's retributively more just (after all, what is needed for society is the money, not the corruptor's death)
c) In the sense of giving deterrent effect, it also gives deterrent effect, as psychologically people have emotional attachment to money (who wants to be deprived of his money?)
But, aside from that, just by putting them 15 years in jail, deprive them from temporary freedom of movement and communication to family, why wouldn't people be afraid of that?
On the other hand, one should not undermine the accountability measure that Indonesia has right now. Inside Directorate General of Tax, they have Directorate of Internal Compliance and Transformation of Apparatus Resources (Direktorat Kepatuhan Internal dan Transformasi Sumber Daya Aparatur/KITSDA) where you can post complaints for any deviant conduct by tax officers. Or Kring Pajak 500200, where you can do the same thing. Inside Ministry of Finance, there are two internal auditor bodies, Inspectorate General (Inspektorat Jendral/Itjen) and State Development and Finance Surveillance Agency (Badan Pengawasan Keuangan dan Pembangunan/BPKP). Outside from Ministry of Finance, we have Supreme Audit Body (Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan/BPK), Taxation Supervisory Committee (Komite Pengawas Perpajakan) and NGOs like Transparency International or Indonesia Corruption Watch.
Second thing I'd like to object was the notion that government that has big chunk of its revenue from tax is a vile government and akin to some gangsters or so, thus we need to maximize export import instead.
I can't believe that although the commenter said he knew economic concept, he didn't knew that export import is not a part from government revenue. Ex-im is part of GDP, and done by private sectors (yet government can get tax from that). Contrary from USA that fulfills 2,17 trillion dollar from its need of 3,87 trillion spending from tax (and the rest from loans), we have alternative sources of income that is Penerimaan Negara Bukan Pajak/PNBP (non-tax revenues) which accounted for 21,6% of our budget (as per 2010). But if he was indeed to think about the concept of revenue sharing from state owned enterprises or revenue from natural resources that are included in PNBP (that in their operation might be exporting something, like in mining companies) maximizing them is not enough to support government budget (not to mention, mining activities are exploitative and unsustainable), as some state owned companies, in fact, are wasting budget and inefficient.
But, let's take a look, does tax in Indonesia restrains us so much? If we use the parameter of tax to GDP ratio (portion of domestic products that is taxed), Indonesia is quite low by accounting for only 11%, compared to Germany (40,6%), France (46,1%), US (26,9%), and UK (39%). If we use the parameter of fiscal freedom used by Heritage Foundation, Indonesia, once again, fares better by having score of 83,0 compared to Germany (58,5), France (52,3), United Kingdom (52,0) and United States (68,3). If we compare Indonesia from income tax tariff to Germany, on the personal income tax, the highest rate of personal income in Indonesia is 30% compared to Germany of 41% and 45%. On corporate income, our tax tariff is 25% (on fiscal year 2010 onwards) not to mention its facility (article 31 E of Indonesian Income Tax Act) of 50% tax cut for companies with gross circulation of 50 billion rupiah and below and taxable income of 4,8 billion rupiah and below. Germany? 29,6% on average.
This is by no mean I'm supporting corruption or whatever. Corruption is an abhorrent act, and it remains so, but killing the perpetrator is unnecessary to be done. On the other hand, we should be grateful (now) that Indonesia is not a gangster government, contrary to what people may perceive.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
On the Expenditure for Civil Servant
Recently, the current finance minister, Agus Martowardojo is planning (via the latest UU Perimbangan Keuangan - Budget Transfer Balancing Act) to cut down local government spending for civil servant wages. He argues that some regions take too much proportions on their budget for this (up to 80%), hence unnecessary, and he plans to curb it into 30-ish% by using outsourced workers and Information Technology optimization.
While sounds flowery on the top, and I have to admit that yes, too much (how much is too much? Why is 15% deemed too much?) government officials are on administrative tasks, but it begs the question, is it good plan anyway to cut the spending?
Firstly, let's take it on economic principle, is spending necessarily bad that it should be cut? Not really. Government spending for government officers' wages increases society purchasing power quite significantly, and that purchasing power drives consumption, which is very essential in creating demand-side economy. Aside from that, some civil servants who take loans from banks provide steady cash supply to banks, because loan payments are deduced from payrolls, it's not so risky for banks to get their money back. But one might argue that it would cost us so much that in the end we turn into Greece 2.0 because of some ballooning debts.
Greece never end up being so suffered because of paying government officials' payroll. It ends up broken like that because Greece pushed itself to join Euro while actually its deficits were never as low as 3%. Add to that fiscal irresponsibility and the lacking of other resources (tourism is not significant), it never had the money to back up their bonds. When their bonds finally graded as junk and danger of default lurks behind, the result is disaster. And far be it from Indonesia as Indonesia debt to GDP ratio is on the level of 27%, contrary to Greece that is 150%. Our bond rating is good as it is on investment grade BBB+ just like India, and our fiscal space in 2010 accounted for 4,87%, 1,87% surplus from the allowed maximum deficit of 3% of GDP.
Secondly, how Agus Marto proposes more capital expenditure meanwhile never explains 1) why on the era of regional autonomy central government is justified to meddle on the right and responsibility of local government to manage their proportion of budget, 2) why capital expenditure is generally more important than operational expenditure, 3) why take drastic measure in reducing it to 30% meanwhile the needs of every local government is different. Maybe some governments indeed need 80% budget to maximize their service, perhaps due to their wide areas thus need wide coverage as well, hence their big number of government officers.
Thirdly, if you're gonna replace civil servants with the outsourced ones in the area of jobs that doesn't need a lot of skill, how can it significantly reduce the budget? Low level civil servants have small payrolls as well (with small amount of allowance). Replacing it with outsourced workers requires you to pay according to regional minimum wages (and some mandatory allowances like healthcare, etc, etc), the differences aren't that big.
Some says the danger of outsourcing in regards of handling classified documents, but yeah, I don't quite know on that. I suggest the measure that can be taken if indeed the budget isn't that optimum, is by giving payrolls in accordance to individual performance, by giving them grades and targets that if they're not fulfilled, affects individual take home pay. But by the constantly replacing nature of outsourcing, it will not be that good because it gives people unsustainable job fields, which is, in my opinion, against the very nature of a country to provide welfare.
Some says that this is policy reflects what Agus Martowardojo's traits in treating employees. Apparently, there were some fiascoes between him per his position in Mandiri bank management against Mandiri bank worker union back then, but I don't want to give comment on that. I don't want to sound too political.
Addendum: He also plans to give civil servants of age 50 years old and older to have early retirement. I will post comment again if the plan is finalized
While sounds flowery on the top, and I have to admit that yes, too much (how much is too much? Why is 15% deemed too much?) government officials are on administrative tasks, but it begs the question, is it good plan anyway to cut the spending?
Firstly, let's take it on economic principle, is spending necessarily bad that it should be cut? Not really. Government spending for government officers' wages increases society purchasing power quite significantly, and that purchasing power drives consumption, which is very essential in creating demand-side economy. Aside from that, some civil servants who take loans from banks provide steady cash supply to banks, because loan payments are deduced from payrolls, it's not so risky for banks to get their money back. But one might argue that it would cost us so much that in the end we turn into Greece 2.0 because of some ballooning debts.
Greece never end up being so suffered because of paying government officials' payroll. It ends up broken like that because Greece pushed itself to join Euro while actually its deficits were never as low as 3%. Add to that fiscal irresponsibility and the lacking of other resources (tourism is not significant), it never had the money to back up their bonds. When their bonds finally graded as junk and danger of default lurks behind, the result is disaster. And far be it from Indonesia as Indonesia debt to GDP ratio is on the level of 27%, contrary to Greece that is 150%. Our bond rating is good as it is on investment grade BBB+ just like India, and our fiscal space in 2010 accounted for 4,87%, 1,87% surplus from the allowed maximum deficit of 3% of GDP.
Secondly, how Agus Marto proposes more capital expenditure meanwhile never explains 1) why on the era of regional autonomy central government is justified to meddle on the right and responsibility of local government to manage their proportion of budget, 2) why capital expenditure is generally more important than operational expenditure, 3) why take drastic measure in reducing it to 30% meanwhile the needs of every local government is different. Maybe some governments indeed need 80% budget to maximize their service, perhaps due to their wide areas thus need wide coverage as well, hence their big number of government officers.
Thirdly, if you're gonna replace civil servants with the outsourced ones in the area of jobs that doesn't need a lot of skill, how can it significantly reduce the budget? Low level civil servants have small payrolls as well (with small amount of allowance). Replacing it with outsourced workers requires you to pay according to regional minimum wages (and some mandatory allowances like healthcare, etc, etc), the differences aren't that big.
Some says the danger of outsourcing in regards of handling classified documents, but yeah, I don't quite know on that. I suggest the measure that can be taken if indeed the budget isn't that optimum, is by giving payrolls in accordance to individual performance, by giving them grades and targets that if they're not fulfilled, affects individual take home pay. But by the constantly replacing nature of outsourcing, it will not be that good because it gives people unsustainable job fields, which is, in my opinion, against the very nature of a country to provide welfare.
Some says that this is policy reflects what Agus Martowardojo's traits in treating employees. Apparently, there were some fiascoes between him per his position in Mandiri bank management against Mandiri bank worker union back then, but I don't want to give comment on that. I don't want to sound too political.
Addendum: He also plans to give civil servants of age 50 years old and older to have early retirement. I will post comment again if the plan is finalized
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