Many things are either halted or disrupted due
to this pandemic. We cannot do many things as we like ☹ Almost
everyone is longing for pre-covid times to return and enjoy yesterday once
more.
Sad to say, this would not happen in the next 3-4 years! Meantime, please continue to endure the hardship and difficult path as it’s yesterday no more.
Earth Day was started in 1970 as a day of
education about environmental issues.
Of course we know lah but now is not the time for environmental
issues but survival during this pandemic.
We are now helping many sectors to survive. I tell you what we
have been doing.
Every year, we generate at least 7 Million tons of solid wastes,
744,000 tons of food wastes, 930,000 tons of plastic wastes so that those in
the waste management sector can keep their jobs. We are ordering more food
deliveries to increase plastic-wastes and to help those gig-workers making a
living. We use 430 Million-Gallons of water/day or 141 litres of water/day/person
(94X1.5L-bottle) so that workers in water resources sector still have their
jobs.
We use 8,361 KWh/Capital/Year of energy so that our workers in the
energy sector continue to flourish. We will be using more and more energy in
the future as we are going GREEN with many devices. We throw at least 168,000
tons of textile/leather a year so that our retail sector still can make big profits
to pay their landlords and their workers.
Finally, we aim to be a ZERO Waste Nation and are waiting for someone
to invent a super-advanced technology that could dissolve all our wastes in
split-seconds! Then we don’t have to worry anymore about our landfill capacity going
to be full by 2035.
We are ‘working’ very hard to survive this pandemic, then look at environmental issues next. Right now, no money means no time for other issues!
I see many seniors have problem walking, not just running
difficulties. Some also run out of health or wealth or both during old age.
The best scenario is to have both health and wealth. To make a
success of it, one must start young. What the heck, why nobody told me earlier?
Now I realize this wisdom too late!
Philip Roth (American novelist & writer) once said: “Old age isn’t a
battle; old age is a massacre.”
Is it, really? The answer is Yes and No, depending
on who you ask.
For seniors who have planned ahead and with good health and wealth, they would disagree with this statement. For seniors who have no health and no wealth and struggle daily to put food on the table, their answer would be yes. A recent study revealed that anyone with S$4M in their banks can retire comfortably here. For those seniors without any ‘hidden’ wealth, they have to continue working because it’s to late to start planning for old age now! ☹ It’s a double whammy: shrinking income vs rising cost of living here! Something isn’t right!
Our health insurance is like a Ponzi scheme. The difference is this scheme is perfectly legal and everyone keeps paying year after year with increasing premiums and nobody hopes to claim from it. Whenever someone makes changes to the scheme, believe me, premiums definitely will go up. The terms and conditions are not fixed at buy-in and they could be changed as and when ‘they’ like. Sigh.
There is really no advantage to buy-into the scheme from a young
age but it has been made mandatory here! Why? Because ‘they’ needed the masses’
‘blood money’ to make huge profits by paying some claimants.
Now, there is a ‘war’ going-on between the LIA (Life Insurance Association) and SMA (Singapore Medical Association) because both want to make more ‘blood-money’ from the insured. Our ‘Big Bro’ is stepping in to mitigate the ‘noise’ but rightfully our MediShield-Life should be separated from those IP because private insurers are using it as a smoke-screen to jack up their premiums whenever big changes are announced. These players are not transparent and often explain vaguely the need for any premium increase.
Why then so many people still go for private IP?
One is they could afford it or someone is paying for it. Second, it’s a long wait at public hospitals which are the training grounds for new and young doctors to gain exposure. Doctors keep changing as many would later go into private practice to make more money. Thirdly, people want immediate health services, so many go for private. So, public or private? You decide, my friend!
All traditional and technical problem-solving techniques have failed to solve human behavioral issues. Why is it so hard to change human behaviors and habits?
In an organization context, some ‘carrot-and-stick’ programs may work in the short term to change habits and behaviors, but change won’t be permanent. As the famous saying goes: old habits die hard. Organizations either have to choose to live with their hardcore workers who refuse to change or just fire and replace them.
When human behavioral issues are the root-causes to many societal problems, society suffers. Nothing would or could change people’s habits and behaviours unless their brains could be ‘washed’ or reset. There is a famous Chinese proverb: 江山易改，本性难移, meaning “it’s easier to change the mountain than to change behavior”, which remains very true till today.
Take the case of our continuing efforts to nudge people to return their trays and crockery after eating at public hawker centres. The latest observation survey showed that only 30% or less of the people return their trays despite the many educational campaigns in the past 3 decades. Why is it so damn tough to get people to return their trays after eating? Everyone from government agencies to civil groups know the real issue lies in people’s mindset and attitude of “I don’t really care!”
No ‘carrot-and-stick’ solution could work for such social problem as ‘carrots’ need funding (nobody wants to dig into their pockets) and the ‘stick’ means legislations and constant monitoring and enforcement in every public eating places. They are simple non-sustainable in the long term.
Studies in human psychology and neuroscience have shown that people change their behaviour only when the change brings relief to their pains, i.e. no pain no change. So in conclusion, to cause change in behaviour and habits, we must create pains. This is the only viable and workable strategy to our decades-old problems nobody has managed to solve. Deploying this “No Pain No Gain” approach with a smart and a simple ‘fool-proof’ engineering design, such behavioral problems could easily be solved as shown in this example here. There is really no need for any expensive and advanced technological solutions. One just needs to determine the root-cause(s) to the problem and think and dig deeper for a workable solution. When we need to deal with ‘fools’, we just need to find a fool-proofing method(s) to counter them.
This is the Poka-Yoke Way, only remaining way to solving this behavioral problems (originally called fool-proofing in Japan but was later changed to mistake-proofing to avoid being offensive).
