Singapore, the platform economy, the meta-capitalist.

Singapore is the ultimate platform economy. In this sense, the goal of the Singapore government is not to maximise Singaporean's contribution to the economy in order to grow it, but rather, the goal is to create an optimal environment in which businesses from around the world can set up here. Singaporean talent does not need to go into the industry, because the goal of Singapore is not to play the game but to become the gamemaker, to become a platform in which players can come and join.

With this in mind, it is then no surprise why Singapore invest significantly into it's governemnt. On one hand, channeling all top talent into the government would cannibalise the amount of talent left for the industry. After all, it is the industry that generates GDP not the government. So why invest so much talent in the government when it doesn't directly generate prosperity for the country?

A good analogy would be Facebook, which is a platform business. Facebook does not invest any of its manpower of creating news articles. Rather it invests significantly in software engineering in order to create a platform which aggregates and distributes news articles. Now, as the platform owner, Faceboook creates the rules on its platform and therefore can easily monetise the people that are on the platform.

We can argue that the amount of work required to build a platform business is far less than the value of the combined value generated by players on the platform, and taking a cut of that value create immense and disproportionate profits. I mean, look at the profit margin of Facebook, Google, Apple! If Facebook committed all its talent into writing news articles to generate value, it would never have grown as big it is now, because the margins of that business are much lower. A platform business is incredibly powerful because once the platform is created, it is possible to utilise relatively low input cost and yield an extremely large disproportionate reward. Other people do the work, while you as the platform owner collects the money!

We can almost see Singapore as operating as a meta-capitalist. Capitalism on the capitalists! This is genius! On the company level, owners of the company built the company which provides a platform for employees to work and receive a wage. The owners do not need to do any work and can simply collect wages, and this is simply because the owners have built this profit generating platform, and once this is constructed, there is little input costs, the employees, such as CEO etc. will run the company and do all the work for the owners! All the owners have to do is to do checks and balances to ensure that the profit generating platform continues to operate healthily, replace the CEO if the vision and direction is not producing results etc. Singapore operates pretty much the same, except on the meta-level. Singapore provides a safe business environment, with low corruption, low crime, favorable taxes, political stability, world-leading public services. These are the fruits of labour of the talented individuals of the government. Singapore, having built such a platform is then able to attract companies from all around the world to be able to come and operate here. These companies are the ones that generate immense value for the world. Singapore simply just needs to take a small cut (via taxes) from the immense value generated from these companies and the country would be immensely wealthy. In this perspective, Singapore with limited manpower and resources simply needs to put all its energy to maintain this platform and keep it functioning well for the companies that are operating on this platform to continue to generate money.

What does this mean for Singaporeans? The often sentiment among Singaporeans is that Singaporeans are very stressed, they work extremely hard and do not live an easy life. Many scorn at the rich people from overseas that are arriving in Singapore, many scorn at the immense wealth inequality in Singapore. However, what many don't realise is that wealth is earned and not given (unless you come from a rich family, but even then the money only last 3 generations, so it must be earned). Nothing is stopping Singaporeans from innovating and producing immense value for the world in order to become rich. The only difference here is that Singapore has managed to attract very rich and wealthy individuals to bring their companies into Singapore, and now Singaporeans have a benchmark to compare themselves unto. Perhaps, many don't realise that the people from overseas that are coming to Singapore is the top 1% of other countries, Singapore has become the aggregation point of the smartest and most talent people and businesses from all over the world due to the platform economy that is created here. The prevalence of the rich in Singapore creates the false perception that being rich is the standard state of living in Singapore, but this is really not true, wealth needs to be fought for, the rich that arrive in Singapore are the extreme minority that have attained it and decided to settle in this platform economy, they have fought the battle in their own countries and they have arrived here as the winners. Therefore, Singaporeans cannot expect to have wealth handed to them, everyone fights for it, many Singaporeans simply didn't see that fight because many foreigners had that fight in their home countries, and they were the survivors and the winners.

To expand more on inequality, it is definitely hard for Singaporeans to compete in the industry in this harsh environment. Afterall, the average Singaporeans are competing with the top 1% from all over the world, this wasn't a fair competition to being with. With natural variation in the alleles in the population, there would be a distribution of talent and ability in Singapore, although Singapore's world leading education system has managed to boost the average capability of the average Singaporean, it is a tough ask for them to compete with the top 1% from all over the world. Moreover, most of the smartest people in the country have already taken government scholarship and would be working for the government, resulting in the remaining populace that are competiing in the industry to face even worse odds. This explains the stress Singaporeans feels and the stagnancy and workaholic lifestyle that is almost a requirement to live in Singapore. The competition is simply that hard.

However, because the government is Singaporean, that also means that all the massive profit margins generated by the government through its platform business can be given back to help Singaporeans. World-class healthcare, education, infrastructure etc. are all important elements that benefits Singaporeans which sets them up to better compete in the extremely competitive environment.

Singapore operates on a charity. It is a charity to Singaporeans, the sad truth is that a large proportion of the Singaporeans would not be able to compete in this extremely competitive environment simply by mechaninsms of natural variation. However, significant government public spending enables many people of this group to still earn a living get signfiicant government support to still survive in the home country. The safety and security of Singapore is simply an illusion, because the fact is that without government support many Singaporeans that are competing in the industry would be not able to survive by their own merit in this society. It is the platform economy that has allowed Singapore to prosper and enjoy a much higher standard of living than what many would be able to attain by their own merit, but with this platform economy comes the risk of losing the national identity, losing the will of Singaporeans, where Singapore would only be a business hub first, and rich-people first. This is the critical balance that is difficult to strike. How do we ensure that the platform retains its identity and not be swayyed by the powers of the individuals on the platform which are significantly richer and more powerful? The key still lies with the government, as long as the government takes enough of the slice of the economy to still be able to manage and maintain the platform economy, then a national identity can still be established from the top-down. Such top-down measures can be seen from the procedures to becomes a Singaporean, significant culture immersion, quizzes on the national culture to ensure that the culture is retain. Another key part of retaining the national identity, to make sure that no Singaporean would be forced out of Singapore due to the inability to afford essential goods and services. If only the incoming foreign rich can afford to live in Singapore, then Singapore would have completely lost its identity.

What else then can Singapore do to increase its local competitiveness? Local competitiveness, while uneccessary for a platform business, can help to strengthen the core and identity of the country (Amazon as a marketplace platform does not need to produce and sell its own products, but it still does so). While we can assume that the most talent are already taken by the government, we also need to recognise that there are different types of talent, there is talent that is good for working for the government and maintaining and sustaining this platform business. BUt there is other types of talent that is very good at innovating and competing in the industry. Therefore, the key here is to be able to encourage such individuals, who are not suitable for the bureucratic environment to maintain the platform economy, but are extremely talented at being scrappy and innovating and creatively thinking of new ideas to push the boundaries and compete on the same level as the foreign influx of rich talent.

For this particular set of individuals, creativity, freedom of expression, breaking down assumptions are important values to inculcate in them. And this should be done through exploratory opportunities, to give the chance for such individuals to challenge the status quo and to do the extraordinary.