Why Benign0's Constant Complaining Hasn't Helped The Philippines At All (As Intended)

CoRRECT Philippines

I was already engaging the fool Benign0 (maybe better call him Bobongn0 from now on). I'm not surprised at the comments he wrote in his article specifically those that replied to me. I'd like to share them and show the kind of pessimism and nihilism that Benign0 writes throughout his article. I must laugh at how Benign0's mind is totally well, OUT OF HIS MIND. Sorry if I have to be mean but Get Real Philippines needs to get real. They wrote some good articles in the past but the problem that causes the Philippines to be the Philippines is SYSTEMIC IN NATURE. Yesterday, I decided to call him out and even wrote an article for him to read. It's because Benign0's claim is just too good to be true. I don't see much objectivity in Benign0's posts, especially with his article on COVID-19 recovery. I was really too perplexed reading the solutions. Like WUT? Are you sure Benign0? Then Benign0 pointed to me to an article where he called the Philippines a squandered foreign investment. Need I mention how Benign0 loves feeding trolls like Juan Lunatic, Darth Moron the Wuss, and Jason VOORHEES? 

I'll display a few of Benign0's comments here. Here are his responses. I'll share his first response before I'll share mine...

Benign0 first addresses some things I could agree with. Yes, Sentimyento De Patatas which he partly describes is a reality. Many Filipinos LACK CRITICAL THINKING and don't bother applying SOUND CRITICAL THINKING. Why do you think Bobong Marcos won as president after he promised the ECONOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE PHP 20.00 PER KILO RICE? Why do you think the late Nobita Aquino won as president after his mother died and he promised, "Kapag walang corrupt ay walang mahirap?" What about former president Atty. Rodrigo R. Duterte's promise to eradicate crime in three to six months? All those really sound like good promises but can they be done anyway? What's the use of criticizing Duterte's 3-6 months promise when Nobita failed to keep his promise to be ran over by a train?

I'm amazed Benign0 raises up the jeepney. He has faster Internet over there in Australia than in the Philippines. I'd like to address that he could've seen that the jeepney can be MODERNIZED. Australia has better public transportation. Yet, Benign0 continues to insist that reliance on foreign capital and foreign commercial activity is a concept embraced by losers. A hypocrite, really, if you consider he's living in a country that operates on foreign capital and foreign commercial activity. What's the use of criticizing the late Joma Sison (who's still cursing capitalism in Hell) for staying in the Netherlands then? The issue is not the jeepney but the refusal to UPGRADE THE JEEPNEY. Vietnam has been upgrading its tuktuks with modern technology. The jeepney can be modernized with better seating capacity while making it look traditional. I guess all he thinks about is, "Filipinos are hopeless that's why FDI won't make a difference." I'm NOT endorsing FDI as a panacea. However, this guy's logic is really making you wonder if his blog deserves its title. 

FDIs would've helped solve the jeepney problem. Either the jeepney phases out or modern jeepneys will replace the old ones. Opening the Philippines to FDI will force jeepney companies to either start modernizing or be outrun by modern jeepneys. I still support the idea of keeping the traditional jeepney look while having a better space layout from within. If those modern jeepneys with better conveniences can't amaze Benign0 - I guess the only thing that will amaze him is if all jeepneys exploded. I wonder how Benign0 recommends upgrading the jeepney if he's so against FDI while staying in a country that GREATLY BENEFITS FROM IT?

I'm NOT going to screenshot all my comments due to their length. However, I'm going to highlight idiotic ideals that Benign0 keeps saying. Before that, I decided to tell them this insight from the book From Third World to First by the late Lee Kuan Yew:

Our job was to plan the broad economic objectives and the target periods within which to achieve them. We reviewed these plans regularly and adjusted them as new realities changed the outlook. Infrastructure and the training and education of workers to meet the needs of employers had to be planned years in advance. We did not have a group of readymade entrepreneurs such as Hong Kong gained in the Chinese industrialists and bankers who came fleeing from Shanghai, Canton, and other cities when the communists took over. Had we waited for our traders to learn to be industrialists we would have starved. It is absurd for critics to suggest in the 1990s that had we grown our own entrepreneurs, we would have been less at the mercy of the rootless MNCs. Even with the experienced talent Hong Kong received in Chinese refugees, its manufacturing technology level is not in the same class as that of the MNCs in Singapore.

According to Benign0 (and he himself IS A FILIPINO) is that Filipinos are collectively hopeless at creating capital and employing capital. The way he said it may imply that he himself believes that let more FDI enter the Philippines and Filipinos will just waste it. WUT? I wonder if he is already aware that Jollibee is now a foreign investor in other countries. I guess he might reason because Tony Tancaktiong is Chinese by blood and not a "hopeless Filipino". If we're to really look into things then what Benign0 is insinuating is that Filipinos are hopeless. What he doesn't realize is that some Filipino products are now export quality. Did he forget about Marikina shoes? Did he forget about Jollibee going to other countries? Did he ever realize some food products in the Philippines are now EXPORT QUALITY? It's because of the entrance of some foreign investment that has allowed Filipino businesses to use imported machinery, new skills, and other concepts. 

This reminds me of what CoRRECT Philippines had written (and he was probably still incensed about it years ago) was this and he still wasn't convinced. I guess he's still too bitter over what Orion Perez Dumdum said to him when the latter was still at GRP:

To those who may not know the whole story, Benign0 was once upon a time this writer’s friend and colleague. Together with another person, 3 of us created the “Get Real Squad” which aimed to wake Filipinos up to understand that there were some serious problems in the Philippines and in Filipino Culture that needed rectification. That group grew in number, with Ben Kritz joining in 2007 and a huge bunch of others joining in 2009.

While Benign0 wrote a lot of articles that essentially talked about the weaknesses inherent in the Philippines and pointed to Filipino Culture as one of its major (if not the major) causes, yours truly acknowledged those same things that Benign0 brought up but also sought to provide practical solutions that would in fact ameliorate the problems found in Philippine Society and simultaneously allow Filipino Culture to improve. One of those solutions was Constitutional Reform.

I argued that the Economic Liberalization aspect of Constitutional Reform (aka “Agenda number 1 of the CoRRECT™ Three Point Agenda”) would help solve the most glaring (but highly under-appreciated) problem of the Philippines today: Massive Unemployment and Underemployment. This reform initiative would entail getting rid of the anti-Foreign Investment provisions of the 1987 Constitution and thus allow Multinational Companies and Foreign Direct Investors to more freely come into the Philippines and create jobs for locally-based Filipinos.

I used the example of Singapore and many other countries in ASEAN whose efforts at fighting poverty and unemployment were all based on getting rid of restrictions against FDI and this immediately translated into higher FDI in-flows and eventually greater job-creation and real and sustainable GDP growth.

But Benign0 suddenly went out to attack that very solution I had suggested. His reason? He insinuates that Filipinos are not ready for the entry of FDI and that Filipinos must first “improve their culture” before FDI is allowed to come in.

(Did other countries in ASEAN even do that whole “everyone needs to change their culture before FDI’s come in” bit? Malaysia certainly didn’t. Indonesia didn’t. Singapore didn’t. Vietnam didn’t. Outside of ASEAN, China and India didn’t. In fact, it was the entry of FDI that changed their cultures to become more competitive!)

Apparently, he doesn’t understand how FDI works as seen in his inability to understand the difference between FDI and OFW Remittances. Worse, despite Benign0 touting himself as some kind of “Filipinos must improve their culture”-warrior, Benign0 has proven to be totally deficient when it comes to understanding what “culture change” requires.

See, it’s easy to tell Filipinos that they need to “improve their culture.” It’s easy to tell Filipinos that they’re “too spendthrift” and that “Filipinos need to learn to live within their means” or that “Filipinos need to learn how to handle money.” Those are the whining rants that have repeatedly come out of Benign0 ever since he decided to launch attacks on my attempts to complement his rants with my solution-proposals.

But Benign0 has never mentioned anything about how those culture changes he says must happen are supposed to happen. He thinks that blogging about it and simply telling Filipinos that “Filipinos are lousy at business” or “lousy at managing money” will cause Filipinos to improve their business acumen or learn to manage money better.

Benign0 seems to have forgotten that very often, the cultural inclinations of people are actually the end result of how their environment or their “eco-system” forces or induces them to act.

When jobs are extremely scarce due to the dearth of investors (local and/or foreign), people tend to lose hope and a kind of “learned helplessness” sets in. Many of these people end up becoming slackers and bums, and a weird culture of dependency on others develops. Oftentimes, the lack of opportunities causes them to make use of an obvious “excuse” or “justification” for why they are jobless because a scarcity of help-wanted ads means they can easily point to the bad job market as the reason for why they’re just slacking off.

Benign0 does not understand that if jobs suddenly became plentiful as a result of a massive increase in FDI inflows resulting from the removal of FDI-restrictions, a lot of the people who are currently slackers and bums would suddenly lose that justification. Everyone will be talking about job openings left and right. The friends of the bums and slackers will be talking about going for job interviews and comparing job offers. Those same friends will be talking about the things they can afford from the salaries they earn. The slackers who earn nothing will become envious and at some point decide to go and find work themselves. The families who support those bums and slackers (usually through OFW remittances or family wealth) will now start pressuring them to get a job. The excuse that “no one’s hiring” or that “there are no jobs” will no longer hold.

As it turns out, a new culture will emerge. Being a bum and slacker won’t be so cool anymore as back when FDI’s were few, it was “excusable” since there were no jobs. Now that there are lots of jobs created by the MNC’s and FDI-inflows, the old excuse won’t work. Internal and external means of motivating these slackers and bums to start the process of going for job interviews will occur as their own envy of their friends who are able to afford stuff will act as the internal pressure, while their own family’s repeated exhortations to “go find a job now that there are lots of job openings everywhere” acts as the external pressure.

More importantly, when jobs become abundant, more and more Filipinos will get hired, and as we all know, work ethic is learned through work. You do not develop work ethic unless you work. If you’re jobless, you can’t develop work ethic. But if you get yourself a job, you will have to perform at your job because if you don’t, you can get fired. That’s how most people develop work ethic: Work.

Another thing: Most people only start developing money management skills once they start earning their own money.

If people are jobless and thus do not earn their own money, then quite obviously, they can’t learn to handle money properly. The only way for people to learn to save is for them to first earn money.

Benign0 can go ahead and whine all he wants. However, it will take SEVERAL GENERATIONS for his solutions to work. That's why Orion posted this truth that he needed to hear: 

(Did other countries in ASEAN even do that whole “everyone needs to change their culture before FDI’s come in” bit? Malaysia certainly didn’t. Indonesia didn’t. Singapore didn’t. Vietnam didn’t. Outside of ASEAN, China and India didn’t. In fact, it was the entry of FDI that changed their cultures to become more competitive!)

I guess the facts don't matter to Benign0. So much for criticizing Filipinos for their emotional stupidity when he himself dwells in it. I even wrote these words on his blog after he asked what is the Philippines doing differently to what it was doing after 1946 when it was granted "independence" by the United States? I wrote the following also on his face:

1.) We had the Filipino First Policy which caused us to FAIL.

2.) The Marcos era only promoted more rampant protectionism. Plus, the Marcos Years weren’t a real parliamentary.

3.) The 1987 Constitution is popularity-driven presidentialism and still protectionist to a certain extent.

Once again, I guess you’d rather argue with trolls than have any real solutions, right? It’s time for you to get real by providing better solutions, not just whining.

Now, Benign0 addresses that I haven't proven him wrong even after showing him some facts. Man, he's pretty much like Jason VOORHEES who foolishly insists that his data proves that the Empire of Marcos was a real parliament. Jason VOORHEES is so unusually silent like the Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th movies. I don't want to sound brutal but I want to joke that maybe Freddy Krueger of The Nightmare of Elm Street may have defeated Jason VOORHEES in hand-to-hand combat. Maybe, Jason VOORHEES is now operating in silent massacres where he hopes that wearing a hockey mask and butchering people with a machete will help improve the Philippines. I even want to assume whoever this Jason VOORHEES is (he just uses the name Jason) must be carrying his machete saying, "BELIEVE ME THE PHILIPPINES WAS UNDER A PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM DURING MARCOS' TIME OR I'LL BUTCHER YOU WITH MY MACHETE." Nice argument and I'm being sarcastic.

Benign0 is now more and more adamant that Filipinos show no evidence of any ability to progress. Again, what happened to Jollibee and Filipino businesses that are engaged in the international market either as MNCs or as exporters? What happened to Filipino exporting firms? What happened to Filipino businesses that have been a hit to foreigners? Heck, did you know that K-Drama actress Suzy Bae wore an expensive gown by Filipina dressmaker Monique Lhuillier? I guess Benign0 has learned to hate who he is to the point that he can't see that Filipinos, LIKE ANY RACE OR NATIONALITY, have the capacity to improve who they are. Can he explain the existence of Filipino scientists who are hitting waves ABROAD? If the Filipino was really lacking the ability to progress - how can he explain Filipinos who SUCCEED ABROAD? The late Lydia De Vega is just one. Cecil Licad is another. Lea Salonga-Chien. Does that ring a bell? I bet like that idiot Jason VOORHEES - Benign0 is still too convinced in his shallow views.

I guess Benign0's solution must be to nuke the Philippines huh? Doing so can have a lot of catastrophic consequences. Sure, let's say one day that a nuclear bomb powerful enough to destroy the Philippines was dropped. Let's say that the bomb was dropped destroying all 7,107 islands were destroyed. No more Philippines. Yehey? Well, there can be consequences I can imagine that a huge nuclear explosion could trigger a huge tidal wave or a whirlpool. I can imagine a tsunami that will be worse than the December 26 tsunami in the 2000s. I could imagine this huge wave could create a superintensity earthquake that could also cause devastation to the Philippines' neighboring countries. It could also cause other archipelagoes and Singapore to be destroyed. Malaysians, Indonesians, Japanese, and Singaporeans might be running for their lives but the intense tsunami would probably destroy them. I can imagine other countries getting hit and suffering from the devastation. It's all because one selfish man hated his country so much that he decided to destroy it.

All because according to this man - the Philippines is a hopeless cause. It must be destroyed. It must be nuked. It seems to be the real aim of GRP now is to GET RID OF THE PHILIPPINES. If this man just looked at how Singapore stared - maybe he'd actually be more different. Instead, this selfish man's selfish wish, if it ever came true, would destroy much of Asia as well. It'd be a total disaster should ever this selfish man gets his wish of a world without the Philippines come true.