| November 2004
Gambling on the Singapore model
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FOREWORD - This article was first intended for Yawning Bread, but was
diverted to the Straits Times when the paper accepted it. It was published in
the newspaper on 12 Nov 2004, under a different header: Casino
decision A bigger question looms.
The Straits Times had requested a 900-word length, and so I had to strip the article down considerably for them. The version that appeared in print can be seen in the yellow box on the right. The fuller version is below: * * * * *
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The casino debate has been dragging on
and on, and we appear no nearer to a decision. The inability to move
forward raises questions about the Singapore model, which we've been
taught to believe was good at arriving efficiently at good decisions.
While we're at stalemate, Macau has pulled itself up to a higher league with the opening of a new Vegas-style casino. Guam and the Northern Marianas are said to be readying plans for their own. Clearly, others believe that as China liberalises travel for citizens, there will be huge demand for gaming holidays within a few hours' flying time from the mainland. The Chinese are inveterate gamblers. An open and shut case, you might think, for us to quickly position ourselves to get a share of the pie. Instead, it looks like a case of paralysis. For decades, the Government was dead set against a casino. Despite hordes at the Turf Club and Toto booths, we were supposed to be a puritan society that believed in discipline and hard work. It's amazing how we can partition our minds and believe that we're free of the evil of gambling, because we don't have a casino (and that we should keep it that way). Anyway, out of the blue, the possibility of a casino was raised. Why? Tourism was in crisis. It was finally admitted, after years of boasting about increasing numbers coming to Singapore, that our dollar share of Asia-Pacific travel had been falling dramatically. Between 1993 and 2002, tourism receipts fell by 21 per cent to $8.8 billion. Singapore's share of East Asia Pacific tourism receipts fell from 8.2 per cent to 5.8 per cent between 1998 and 2002. For a people fed a steady diet of economic success stories, this was a disgraceful admission. Among remedies suggested was that of a casino. Well, not in so many words, at first. The idea was couched in language about a "premium resort" that could be built on one of our offshore islands, not unlike the upscale and multifaceted Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. It didn't take long for the key attraction of Atlantis to emerge: its casino. After all, it's owned by Sol Kerzner, the gaming magnate who founded Sun City, a well-known gambling resort in South Africa, and who owns other mega-casinos in the US. Once the frill of a "premium resort" fell away, the debate since then has been over the idea of permitting a casino in Singapore. That's where we were a year ago, and that's still about where we are today - an idea. In the months since, voices were raised against admitting this evil into Singapore. Most focused on the social costs: addiction sets in; families are ruined. Surveying letters in the press, there have perhaps been more anti- than pro-casino letters. My guess is that it probably reflects the balance of opinion among Singaporeans generally, or at least those who hold an opinion on the matter.Moreover, those opposed to gambling tended to be more ardent in their views than those on the other side, which again is not surprising. Absolutists tend to be more insistent, to have more fire in their bellies, than pragmatists. Many of those opposed to the idea, I'm
sure, were also fired by their religion, while religious leaders
themselves soon spoke up. "We are against gambling which leads to the detriment of the
individual, his family and the community," said Catholic Archbishop
Nicholas Chia in a statement on Friday, 3 September 2004. Thus, if left to popular opinion, we're not likely to see a casino approved. Yet there may be a lobby within the Government convinced that we need one. But that lobby appears unable to obtain the necessary consensus to move ahead. It displayed a complete lack of political savvy in presenting its case, and this failing itself unveils a more general observation about Singapore. The proponents from the Tourism Board wrong-footed themselves at the outset by using the justification of attracting tourist dollars. Although honest, it was a weak argument for public consumption when set against opposition that was emotional, complete with images of social blight and religious damnation. It was easy for opponents to paint the idea as one of selling our souls for a few foreign pennies.Did the bureaucrats overrate the dollars and cents argument? I wouldn't be surprised if they did. Our entire government machinery is suffused with a dollars-and-cents mentality. Such an argument may carry the day within our technocratic, economics-is-everything government, but it doesn't fly very well in public debate. The second mis-step the proponents
made, came when the first barrage of opposition hit them. In an effort to
placate opponents, the idea of denying citizens access, except for the
rich, was floated. That way, we earn tourist dollars without low-brow
Singaporeans succumbing to temptation. At a stroke, the pro-casino
bureaucrats lost the support of the tens of thousands of eager punters
locally, who might otherwise have helped push forward the plan.
Why should I support this scheme if they look
down on us as the unworthy hoi-polloi? That concession not only revealed a lack of political savvy, it reminded the happy Turf-club and Toto crowd of the elitism they perennially grumble about. The first flaw in the Singapore model is this: The old way of making decisions, within an elite few, within rational, largely economic parameters, may no longer work. The public wants a say, and the government, recognising this, wants public input for all major policy decisions in future. But to win a debate with a crowd, you have to go beyond the technical or abstract, and appeal to the personal and aspirational, a skill that almost no one in our administrative state has. The second flaw we can discern is this: we too often take the easy way out and concede at least part of the way to the conservatives. As a society, we've been brainwashed to put religion, orthodoxy and a Confucianist construction of family and social order as incontestably good. But in these times, when we need to make dramatic changes of course to cope with a rapidly changing external environment, the inability to shake off our conservatism, our unwillingness to challenge archaic tenets, holds us back. * * * * * More recently, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong tried to appear neutral. He said, yes, there are social costs, but there are economic benefits. Can we find a way to manage the social costs? Can we be convinced the economic benefits will outweigh the costs? The PM's musing assumed that costs and benefits are calculable; that a technocratic answer can be found. What if they are not? How will the question ever be resolved? Equally, I thought the PM's reformulation of the casino question ran counter to the Government's calls for more risk-taking and entrepreneurial adventures. Sometimes, you have to go on a hunch. You can't take your own sweet time to calculate cost-benefit to the nth degree. Nor can you wait until the profitability of a concept is proven by someone else. If so, he's ahead of you in the game. The external environment is extremely fluid. How fast will China's market open up? How fast will competitors fling open their casino doors? How seedy to how classy will Singapore's casino end up being, in which case, what kind of crowd will it attract? How can we expect this to be within the government's control when it's going to be a commercial enterprise, who have to somehow make a profit? Do we stop at one, or will we need more than one casino to capture a meaningful market share? Conversely, how many here will lose self-control? How many families will suffer? And whatever numbers are thrown up by our various feasibility studies, how do we have any faith in theoretical projections? If we are fazed by all these risks and unknowns and say 'no' to the idea -- let's not take a risk -- what about those budget airlines that make it ever cheaper to fly to a neighbouring country endowed with gambling options? What about Internet gambling? Won't it be a future where we still have the social costs of gambling without the economic benefits of such an industry? That last question hits the nail on the head. It matters not what the cost-benefit ratio is. The cost is coming to us anyway. You don't need a technocrat to see the answer. * * * * * Yet another aspect of the Singapore model being shown up is our decades-long embrace of morality and social order, and conformity. We have cultivated a paternalistic mindset, where we seek to impose on others what we think is good of them; we place little value on liberty. It's become so ordinary to deprive others of the freedom to do what they want with their lives, we hardly stop ourselves to reflect upon our instincts. We've had campaigns against yellow culture, long hair, drug-influenced pop music and hippie-ism in general. We've banned this and that. We've disparaged play, escapism and individualism as antithetical to the discipline and self-sacrifice that have underpinned Singapore's success. Now we want a casino? We're going to disown four decades of belief to hook more tourists? No wonder the idea's stuck. We've been brought up to believe that the
Singapore model delivers results. But now, it's leading us to paralysis.
So the question may well be bigger than just that of a casino. Does the
Singapore model itself need to be re-examined?
© Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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