Above all else

I recently read Strangers Drowning, by Larissa MacFarquhar, which is a collection of essays on the phenomenon of what she calls "do-gooders" - people who go above and beyond to live what seem to be excessively altruistic lives, particularly in caring for strangers above their own needs, and even their own family's needs. It is a scintillatingly good book and I highly recommend it. Ms MacFarquhar profiles several people who have chosen the "do-gooder" life, and interposes some reflective interludes in between the biographies, questioning whether what she terms as "morality" ought to be "the highest human court" and whether such morality might even compromise what it means to be human. For example, if you were to come across your spouse and a stranger drowning in a pond, who should you save? Pure morality, smelted in a furnace to shining perfection, might suggest that there ought to be no difference between the two . And what if there were two ...

Singapore has its commercial origins as an entrepot - a transhipment hub where stuff is brought in, traded, and then exported again. This was originally a quirk of geography, given its strategic location at the southern-most point of continental Asia, connecting East and West where the Straits of Malacca meet the South China Sea.  These days, Singapore's trading hub status is anchored by a skilled workforce, stable government, reliable physical and digital connectivity, and sensible laws. As an offshore centre for trading everything from currencies to commodities, Singapore faces an interesting (anti) competitive issue. Though we are an attractive trading venue, we are seldom a major producer or user of the traded item.  For example, Singapore is the third largest foreign exchange centre in the world, with average daily trading values of US$929b in April 2022 (Source: MAS). But only a small minority of it (just over 5%) is in Singapore dollars. The same is true for various ot...