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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 8bits who wrote (16423)	4/3/2007 9:50:06 PM
From: Slagle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 219784

8bits, I would literally rather be dead than condemned to live in Singapore. I can't stand the place. Give me Indonesia or the Philippines any day. Or maybe Bangkok. <grin> But that is beside the point. The Philippines will never be like Singapore, nor will Indonesia. Nor would the locals choose for it to be that way either, even if possible. You would just have to go live there in the boondocks to understand this. Life there, in the countryside, is very good. Corruption is not nearly the problem there that you seem to imply. At the very top it is, of course, at the level of national politicians or big business. But at the level I operated, I never had to pay off anybody to get something from the government and I had considerable dealings with government offices there, every bit of it pleasant. But somehow I see I am not really explaining my point very well. Take your typical third world great city, say Metro Manila with their twenty some odd millions; many things that we expect to be provided by government, say around the clock police patrols, just do not happen there. Let's say you live there in a fairly nice middle class neighborhood, well, after dark anyway, your personal security at your home is YOUR responsibility. The police will simply not go out to investigate a robbery or murder or anything else in the middle of the night. Most of the world lives like this, to a degree. So after dark, you lock things up, and if there is a serious problem, you call on your neighbors and they will come running in a hurry. It is a more "cooperative" approach to living than the more "institutional" method associated with Europe and the US. Believe me, the Manila system works VERY WELL. And yes, if the California guy had been more thoughtful he might still be here today. But with regards to locals with their own private army, you have to be fairly high up for this to be accepted, a large land baron in some parts of the country and probably a politician to boot. But these guys have to be fairly careful and not use their security detail in an abusive way or the REAL army will come calling. Or if not the army, the NPA rebels. Very complicated picture in all these places. Slagle