Heeding Environment, Social, Governance strictures make seafarers politically correct
 Reading the headline "Is shipping’s business model incompatible with ESG?" one was at first buoyed with hope that one was about to read an article in Singapore's Splash 247, decrying the continuing loss of freedom suffered by seafarers through ever intrusive regulations.
But no. In case you missed it - and it is nowhere explained in the article, is that ESG stands for Environment, Social, Governance. What was aggravating about the piece itself, is its assumption that government regulation and spending was the wisest choice one could make.
The article is written by veteran salvor Piet Sinke who runs a consultantcy called Maasmond Maritime out of Singapore. He relied on the recently introduced artificial intelligence app ChatGPT to assist in the writing of his essay. Thus, one was hardly surprised to learn that the result had a bias against individual choice vis-a-vis government wisdom.
Consider this from his AI-inspired article: "When corporations and individuals engage in tax avoidance, they are effectively reducing the funds available for public spending, which can ultimately impact the well-being of citizens and the overall functioning of the state.
"While tax avoidance is not necessarily illegal, it can reduce the amount of revenue that the government collects, which can have significant implications for public services and infrastructure.
“Governance involves the processes and structures by which decisions are made and implemented within a society, including by the government. In this sense, tax avoidance can be seen as a governance issue because it can undermine the government’s ability to effectively collect revenue and allocate it towards public goods and services. When corporations and individuals engage in tax avoidance, they are effectively reducing the funds available for public spending, which can ultimately impact the well-being of citizens and the overall functioning of the state.”
One can forgive such conclusions when speaking of Singapore or pre-2019 Hong Kong. While it may be considered excessively interventionist for government to intrude in the private sector to the extent does, even such cases, these jurisdictions tend towards the minimalist. They were strict and severe when they chose interfere but they did so rarely and within known bounds.
In these cases, the state made an honest attempt to do good with a level of competence unknown in most governments the world over.
Most blame politicians for this state of affairs, but that is to miss the point. For the most part, politicians are popular tribunes who know what the people want, or at least those interests they really represent, but with rare exception, they know little of how to operate the levers of state power. Instead, power resides in the self-perpetuating cadre of civil servants.
And these officials are corrupt, not so much by financial inducement, though this may be a problem for a select few, sometimes entire body of them in poorer countries. The problem is more serious than that when one appreciates that the corruption is not of a pecuniary nature. The most incidious corruption is perfectly legal, and can even described as well-meaning. And in Mr Sinke's article, it can even be viewed as praiseworthy and it is in this light, that it is to be seen and defended by politicians.
Listening to Thomas Sowell, the multi-book author and economist, one hears of his first job at the US Department of Agriculture. There he found fault with introducing a minimum wage in Puerto Rico. What he discovered were civil servants trading on their own account, not caring a jot about what was the best course for the public, but what was good for the department and its leadership in its never-ending fratricidal war with other departments. It was clear that his colleages did not care whether a minimum wage would be good or bad for Puerto Rico, only that the department had to push it through. He was told as much. It was this realisation, this experience of actually working for the government, that caused him to ditch his burgeoning enthusiasm for Marxist solutions.
One can see this form of non-pecuniary corruption more plainly in the recent Covid scare. Of course, more pecuniary corruption, at the very least profiteering can be made plain and worthy of forensic examination given the impact the Covid crisis on the world. Pharmacuetical giants made substantial fortunes forcing people to take vaccinations that did not vaccinate and wear masks that afforded no protection against the virus.
As former US President Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once said: "Never let a crisis go to waste." One might suggest that has been the operational principle upon which much of the world's governments have been operating for the last two years and it seemed if they could get away with it, they would like 10 years more. China only backed down on their zero-Covid policy when rioting broke out all over the country.
This was quite different from SARS epidemic of 2003 and 2009. Not so much the medical impact of SARS versus Covid in 2020. Scientists who were asked to determine which was worse, said they could not say. Which meant - if nothing else - that one could not have been much worse than the other.
When Donald Tsang was chief executive he took the minimalist approach and told people as much could be known and to proceed about one's business with due caution. Not his successor Carrie Lam, who embraced the lemming-like of panic to mandate this and forbid, sparking mass protests. Not to be outdone, and Canadian and Australian governments came up with even more draconian measures, even seizing bank accounts to stop people funding anti-Covid protests and in Canada's case, invoking the cosmetically renamed War Measures Act (Emergency Measures Act) to enforce the will of the state. There was none of this for SARS. Not a bit of it. Not a hint of it.
Singapore took a Gunga Din course, standing off from the madness "fifty paces right flank rear". Under the Communist thumb Hong Kong joined the madness. Not to the same extent Beijing did, but close enough so it would not draw attention to itself. |
