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| ISSUE 96 - Apr 2012 |
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Bingeing to death
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A supercharged diet of high-calorie growth is wrecking the city’s health, choking sustainable development
Keith Morrison Author and educationist – kmorrison.iium@gmail.com
Macau has an obesity problem. It is fat and bursting at the seams. If we could use the Body Mass Index, its weight-to-size ratio would be enormous.
Macau is expanding wherever you look. Even its landmass, though still below 30 sq km, is increasing.
Macau is like a giant stomach, consuming people, money, commodities, traffic, water, electricity, services – everything. And it continues to eat, even when its stomach is full.
Macau’s population rises and rises, reaching 557,400 by the end of last year. Live births, at 5,852 last year, outstrip mortality by a factor of more than three.
Parts of Macau have some of the highest population density in the world. I am not sure if this is a statistic of which the city should be proud. The city is like a battery farm, packed high and tight with people and apartments.
Add to this millions of visitors – more than 28 million last year, a 12-percent increase on the year before – and it is hardly surprising there are crowds everywhere you look.
Shopping centres are bursting with people. The value of retail sales rose by 42 percent last year, to MOP43.34 billion (US$5.4 billion), and visitor expenditure, excluding gaming expenses, reached MOP45.3 billion. Hotel occupancy rates exceeded 84 percent.
Stuffed to the gills
The bulging stomach eats and eats. The value of Macau’s imports was more than MOP62 billion last year. The number of vehicles, more than 206,300 by the end of December, has almost doubled since the handover. There is monstrous traffic congestion, or, pursuing the stomach metaphor, indigestion.
There are hundreds of casino and tourist coaches on the streets, and the public bus system is creaking. I contacted the city’s three bus companies to ask how many buses were in their fleets and operating at 9am on weekdays. There was no response.
Macau’s traffic clearly exemplifies the “paradox of intensification”. Studies led by British scholar Steve Melia show that as urban intensification grows in terms of population and density, the average number of miles travelled per motor vehicle may fall, but only a little. If population density increases by one third, for example, per capita private car usage does not decrease by one third. Instead, traffic volumes and congestion actually go up inside the intensified area.
In Macau, there is clear evidence of the fallout from intensification every year. Road closures during the Grand Prix immediately result in a citywide gridlock.
Stomach ulcers
Macau’s appetite cannot be satisfied.
There were more than 1.35 million active mobile phone numbers by the end of December, including pre-paid cards, and more than 209,000 registered Internet subscribers.
The public coffers are full. Government revenue last year stood at just under MOP113 billion; revenue from direct taxes on gaming alone was more than MOP98 billion.
Macau consumed an average of almost 6 million cubic metres of water a month last year. Electricity consumption topped 413 million kWh in August. Both figures are all-time highs.
In the fourth quarter of last year, the city’s consumption of liquefied petroleum gas was 10,958 tonnes, an increase of 25.5 percent over the previous quarter. Electricity consumption rose by 5.5 percent last year to 3.86 billion kWh.
The fallout from these increases is palpable. Macau has stomach ulcers.
Last year, the number of traffic accidents increased by 7 percent, to more than 14,100 crashes. The human cost was more than 5,500 wounded, both dead and injured – the highest on record.
The crime rate rose by 7.4 percent last year to more than 12,500 incidents. Crimes against property soared significantly. Social problems have intensified to the extent that there are reports the authorities may import social workers to cope with demand.
Services suffer. The waiting lists at the hospitals run into months and crowds mass daily for treatment. Huge lines of people choke the immigration points. The sole landline telecommunications network in Macau broke down in February, leaving thousands without any form of communication for hours.
In total, it suggests that Macau is full, and being full is not necessarily a good thing. It brings dyspepsia and colic.
Yet I see few concerns raised by the government about Macau’s obesity. Is there no required limit to, or regulation of, the city’s appetite? Macau needs to go on a diet or have weight-loss surgery.
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Weigh more, pay more
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If we value both sustainable human wellbeing and our planet’s natural environment, my weight – and yours – is everyone’s business
Peter Singer Professor of Bioethics, Princeton University
We are getting fatter. In Australia, the United States and many other countries, it has become commonplace to see people so fat that they waddle rather than walk. The rise in obesity is steepest in the developed world but it is occurring in middle-income and poor countries as well.
Is a person’s weight his or her own business? Should we simply become more accepting of diverse body shapes? I don’t think so. Obesity is an ethical issue because an increase in weight by some imposes costs on others.
I am writing this at an airport. A slight Asian woman has checked in with, I would guess, about 40 kilograms of suitcases and boxes. She pays extra for exceeding the weight allowance. A man who must weigh at least 40 kilos more than she does, but whose baggage is under the limit, pays nothing. Yet, in terms of the airplane’s fuel consumption, it is all the same whether the extra weight is baggage or body fat.
Tony Webber, a former chief economist for the Australian airline Qantas, has pointed out that, since 2000, the average weight of adult passengers on the company’s planes has increased by two kilos. For a large, modern aircraft like the Airbus A380, that means that an extra US$472 (MOP3,776) of fuel has to be burned on a flight from Sydney to London. If the airline flies that route in both directions three times a day, over a year it will spend an additional US$1 million for fuel, or, on current margins, about 13 percent of the airline’s profit from operating that route.
Get on the scale
Mr Webber suggests that airlines set a standard passenger weight, say, 75 kilos. If a passenger weighs 100 kilos, a surcharge would be charged to cover the extra fuel costs. For a passenger who is 25 kilos overweight, the surcharge on a Sydney-London return ticket would be US$29. A passenger weighing just 50 kilos would get a discount of the same amount.
Another way to achieve the same objective would be to set a standard weight for passengers and luggage, and then ask people to get on the scales with their luggage. That would have the advantage of avoiding embarrassment for those who do not wish to reveal their weight.
Friends with whom I discuss this proposal often say that many obese people cannot help being overweight – they just have a different metabolism from the rest of us. But the point of a surcharge for extra weight is not to punish a sin, whether it is levied on baggage or on bodies. It is a way of recouping from you the true cost of flying you to your destination, rather than imposing it on your fellow passengers. Flying is different from, say, healthcare. It is not a human right.
An increase in the use of jet fuel is not just a matter of financial cost; it also implies an environmental cost, as higher greenhouse gas emissions exacerbate global warming. It is a minor example of how the size of our fellow citizens affects us all. When people get larger and heavier, fewer of them fit onto a bus or train, which increases the costs of public transport. Hospitals now must order stronger beds and operating tables, build extra-large toilets and even install extra-large refrigerators in their morgues – all adding to their costs.
Everyone’s business
Indeed, obesity imposes a far more significant cost in terms of healthcare more broadly. Last year, the Society of Actuaries estimated that in the United States and Canada, overweight or obese people accounted for US$127 billion in additional healthcare expenditure. That adds hundreds of dollars to annual healthcare costs for taxpayers and those who pay for private health insurance. The same study indicated that the costs of lost productivity, both among those still working and among those unable to work at all because of obesity, totaled US$115 billion.
These facts are enough to justify public policies that discourage weight gain. Taxing foods that are disproportionately implicated in obesity – especially foods with no nutritional value, such as sugary drinks – would help. The revenue raised could then be used to offset the extra costs that overweight people impose on others and the increased cost of these foods could discourage their consumption by people who are at risk of obesity, which is second only to tobacco use as the leading cause of preventable death.
Many of us are rightly concerned about whether our planet can support a human population that has surpassed seven billion. But we should think of the size of the human population not just in terms of numbers but also in terms of its mass. If we value both sustainable human wellbeing and our planet’s natural environment, my weight – and yours – is everyone’s business.
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Raising the bar
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Third-party barrings are worth considering as a way to prevent gambling-related harm
David Green Gaming consultant, Newpage Consulting
It is now 10 years since the dismantling of the former Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau casino monopoly and the granting of the first of the new concessions. Those intervening years, particularly since 2004, have propelled Macau to the forefront of the global gaming industry. While a number of Asian jurisdictions are moving forward with casino legalisation, only Singapore went from concept to built form in the decade of the noughties.
The so-called “Sands effect”, namely the gaming boom observed here after the opening of Sands Macao in Nape in May 2004, has largely been replicated in Singapore. This hasn’t necessarily been a welcome development. It has apparently accelerated Singapore’s exposure to the collateral damage which easy local access to gambling product can bring.
While the potential for such damage was not unanticipated (the second reading speech of the 2006 Casino Control Bill contains numerous references to the need to mitigate the potential harm associated with gaming), there are indications that the extent of it may have been. This is reportedly focusing Singapore policymakers’ attention on how to beef up the safeguards for players, especially locals, while not unduly restricting the freedom to participate of those unaffected by disordered gaming.
In the second reading speech, the deputy prime minister said that “to discourage locals from developing into problem gamblers … the bill shall require the casino operators to collect an entry levy from Singapore citizens and permanent residents for every consecutive 24 hours in the casinos or S$2,000 [MOP12,730] for an annual membership. This levy will also underscore the message that gambling is an expense and not a means to get rich”.
Inelastic demand
On the face of it, an entry levy would seem a reasonable means of discouraging persons with susceptibility to gamble irresponsibly from visiting a casino.
However, let’s consider analogous situations, where price has not proved a deterrent to risky consumption. The price of cigarettes and liquor, for example, has skyrocketed in many countries, yet there seems to be relatively inelastic demand for those products, especially in the developed world. Studies I have participated in suggest that the demand for gambling products may have a similar degree of insensitivity to price, the “price” under consideration being cost of participation – i.e., the cost of a lottery ticket or the theoretical hold associated with a particular casino game.
Quite apart from whether it is a deterrent to entry, there may be an unintended adverse consequence associated with a casino levy, which is that people who have paid to enter will likely want to get their money’s worth and perhaps play longer than they would if they could enter at will. Note that duration of play is a key determinant of the extent of a player’s losses and extending the duration of play is a primary objective of any gaming operation.
I can’t point to any research that would definitively support that a casino levy may lead people to play longer, but again consider an analogy to which we can all relate. An all-you-can-eat buffet is far more likely to result in excessive consumption than an ‘à la carte’ menu, even if the buffet price is comparable. Why? Human nature, I suppose; acceptance of the illusion that once the initial price is paid, what follows comes free.
A lot of well-intentioned but ineffective effort has gone into trying to mitigate the harm caused by disordered gaming. But how do you stop an alcoholic’s dependence? Deny them access to liquor.
All the warnings and counselling in the world will not necessarily produce behaviour modification while exposure to product continues. Like disordered gaming, alcohol dependence is an illness. Hence the references in research literature to the instances of co-morbidity in problem gamblers, meaning they may also be dependent on alcohol, tobacco or drugs; they have a propensity for disordered behaviour.
Forbidden entry
Denial of access has been recognized as a key plank in restricting the harm gaming may cause. In its 2010 report into the gambling industry, the Australian Productivity Commission observed: “The link between accessibility of gambling and its harmful effects is strongly policy relevant because governments have the capacity to define the terms of access”.
In Australia, this has played out in a number of policy approaches, such as caps on gaming machine numbers (gaming machines accounting for a larger share of the market than tables), mandatory shutdown periods and, most recently, a move to introduce compulsory pre-commitment limits, so that players determine the amount they are willing to spend before they commence play.
The Australian Productivity Commission itself suggested another form of access denial, by limiting bets in electronic gaming machines to a maximum of A$1 (MOP8.5).
The issue is that such measures are blunt instruments, affecting the vast majority of players who do not have problems controlling their gambling. In the case of pre-commitment, one unintended consequence of implementation as proposed at the federal level would be the likelihood that people would err on the side of setting high limits, because hitting the specified limit would preclude them from playing machines again for 24 hours.
Singapore has taken up a policy initiative similar to that adopted in South Australia in 2004, which is to provide for third party barring in certain situations. The scheme empowers family members of people affected by disordered gaming to apply for the subject gambler to be barred, with the order made by the National Council on Problem Gambling rather than by the regulator as in South Australia.
The Singapore legislation is less restrictive as to who may apply for an order or the period within which an apprehension of harm from problem gambling should manifest. There is no right of appeal conferred by the Singapore legislation, whereas in South Australia an appeal is allowed to a court.
Such barrings present a difficult balancing act; whose interests should have primacy, those of the family or the player? South Australia does require a dependent relationship between the complainant and the affected gambler; Singapore does not.
While it is contentious, third party barrings are an effective way of removing the source of gambling-related harm. The model is worth considering, as an adjunct to the usual raft of symptomatic and behavioural treatments, and interventionist strategies.
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China’s politics of the economically possible
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The country’s ruling elites are almost certain to dismiss the World Bank’s
just-released report “China 2030” as politically undesirable and irrelevant
Minxin Pei Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College
When sound economic advice is divorced from political reality, it probably will not be very useful advice. The history of multilateral financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank is littered with well-intentioned and technically feasible economic policy prescriptions that political leaders ignored. But that has not stopped these institutions from trying.
The latest attempt is the World Bank’s just-released and much-applauded report “China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society”. As far as technical economic advice goes, the report is hard to top. It provides a detailed, thoughtful and honest diagnosis of the Chinese economy’s structural and institutional flaws, and calls for coherent and bold reforms to remove these fundamental obstacles to sustainable growth.
Unfortunately, while the World Bank’s report has laid out a clear economic course that Chinese leaders should pursue for the sake of China, the Bank has shied away from the most critical question: will the Chinese government actually heed its advice and swallow the bitter medicine, given the country’s one-party political system?
For example, among the most urgent reforms that “China 2030” recommends is reduction of the state’s role in the economy. This can be achieved by eliminating privileges for state-owned enterprises, such as subsidised capital and monopolies, and by allowing the private sector more freedom. But, curiously, the report’s authors seem to forget that this would entail prohibitive, if not disastrous, costs for the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Ensuring self-preservation China’s giant state-owned enterprises may have some economic usefulness, but their existential value is political. The Chinese Communist Party uses the state-owned enterprises to provide good jobs and perks for its members. Of the Chinese Communist Party’s roughly 80 million members, more than 5 million hold executive positions in state-owned enterprises or affiliated firms. Factoring in the regulators and local administrators whose jobs similarly depend on maintaining the current level of state intervention in the economy, World Bank-style reforms would jeopardise probably close to 10 million official sinecures.
There is little doubt that reducing the state-owned enterprises’ power would make the Chinese economy far more efficient and dynamic. But it is hard to imagine that a one-party regime would be willing to destroy its political base.
Fiscal reform is another urgent priority highlighted by “China 2030”. China’s highly regressive fiscal system (the poor are taxed more than the wealthy) entails excessive revenues for the central government and relatively little expenditure on social services. In nominal terms, aggregate tax and non-tax revenues collected by both the central and local governments exceed 35 percent of gross domestic product. But the bulk of the revenues is spent on administration, fixed-asset investment, domestic security, defence and assorted lavish perks – entertainment, junkets, housing, cars and high-quality healthcare – for government officials.
“China 2030” suggests that China should gradually increase its spending on social services by 7 percent to 8 percent of GDP over the next 20 years. But why should the Chinese Communist Party do so? After all, the overall real taxation level in China is already quite high, which means that doubling social spending from the current level without raising taxes further would require severe cuts in expenditures that chiefly benefit the ruling elites.
The budgetary transparency that the World Bank has recommended will most likely not be realised for the same reason. Current public spending is so skewed toward the ruling elites that the Chinese Communist Party would risk losing its legitimacy should the budget become subject to public scrutiny.
A tired slogan
Making China a “harmonious” society – the aim of the report’s advice on reducing inequality – is clearly a desirable goal. However, it is a tired slogan even by Chinese standards. Trotted out by China’s rulers many years ago, the “harmonious society” campaign has yielded, at best, modest changes in policy. The underlying political drivers of social frustration and conflict – disenfranchisement, repression, pervasive official corruption, unaccountable rulers and predatory state institutions and policies – remain unchanged.
Addressing these fundamental causes of social discontent and unsustainable economic performance requires not advice and pleas to the ruling elites but a change in China’s political reality that compels those who benefit from the ‘status quo’ to surrender their privileges for the good of the country.
Only two likely developments could lead to this outcome. One is the political empowerment of the Chinese people. But democratisation is currently unlikely, given the Chinese Communist Party’s clear determination to defend one-party rule.
That leaves political change at the mercy of a system-threatening crisis, brought on by China’s failure to tackle the pathologies the World Bank has so ably diagnosed. And, alas, China’s ruling elites are almost certain to dismiss “China 2030” as politically undesirable and irrelevant.
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A fair reflection
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Bill Kwok-Ping Chou/ Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Macau
The electoral privileges of associations should be revoked to make Macau’s political system more representative
After January’s first stage of public consultation about the reform of Macau’s electoral system, the government announced that opinion was mostly in favour of increasing the number of members of the committee that elects the Chief Executive, to make it more representative of society at large.
Most people also thought there should be more directly elected and indirectly elected members of the Legislative Assembly, but no change in the number of members appointed by the Chief Executive.
Since officials regard fair representation of society and legitimate popular mandates for the executive and legislative branches of government as important goals, we must consider how the electoral committee and the assembly can better reflect the composition of society.
The biggest problem with the present system is that ordinary residents of Macau can vote only for candidates for directly elected seats in the assembly, while leaders of associations can vote for candidates for directly elected and indirectly elected seats, and have a say in choosing the members of the electoral committee for the Chief Executive. This contravenes the “one person, one vote” principle. Furthermore, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which, according to the Basic Law, applies to Macau, says nothing about allowing voters to relinquish their voting rights in favour of associations.
Strangleholds
The Legislative Assembly has 10 indirectly elected members, of whom four represent the industrial, commercial and financial sectors. This is far more than the ratio of employers to the general population would indicate is fair. Conversely, only two indirectly elected members represent the labour sector – far fewer than the ratio of employees to the general population would indicate is fair.
The distribution of indirectly elected seats is unrepresentative and should be corrected. The number of seats for the industrial, commercial and financial sectors should be reduced to one, allowing the number for the labour sector to be increased by three.
The method of filling the indirectly elected seats should also be changed.
Individual voters should be registered according to their occupations, and each allowed one vote for a candidate for the indirectly elected seat reserved for his or her economic sector.
This would make the indirectly elected members more representative. And it would break the stranglehold that the Macau Chamber of Commerce has on the four seats for the industrial, commercial and financial sectors, and the stranglehold that the Macau Federation of Trade Unions has on the two seats for the labour sector.
This reform would make the two indirectly elected seats reserved for the “professional” sector unnecessary. These seats, and any new ones, could be allocated to interest groups that lack proper representation, such as students, housewives and the retired. Again, they should be filled by following the “one person, one vote” principle.
Advisory expertise
The seven members appointed by the Chief Executive are clearly unrepresentative and undermine any grounds that the assembly might have to claim a popular mandate.
Without big changes to the Basic Law, their seats cannot be scrapped. But the ongoing electoral reform process allows enough room to mitigate the inequity.
The most radical solution would be to reduce the number of appointed members to one. Or a rule could be made limiting eligibility for appointment to the losing candidates in the direct elections with the highest number of votes. This would allow the appointees to claim a modicum of public support for their political agenda.
Or the function of appointed members could be made purely advisory. They would be able to take part in all the business of the assembly, but not vote. This would allow the Chief Executive to inject some much-needed technical expertise into the assembly – given that the lack of technical expertise is sometimes cited as grounds for keeping the appointed members.
As for the committee that elects the Chief Executive, all its members should be elected by following the “one person, one vote” principle, to make the committee more representative of society. The present constituencies should be abolished and anyone allowed to stand for membership.
Even in the direct elections for the Legislative Assembly there is a need for reform. In 2009, each list of candidates was allowed to spend up to MOP8.9 million (US$1.1 million) on campaigning. It is too much because it favours more affluent candidates who, if elected, tend to look after the interests of big corporations. Macau should learn from Hong Kong, where limits on campaign spending are much lower.
The government should also make stricter laws against vote-buying and other election bribery, enforce these laws better and promote clean elections. All this would make our political system more representative and allow the Legislative Assembly and the Chief Executive to claim a legitimate popular mandate.
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All together now
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The hospitality industry is full of randomly assembled groups of employees
but few can be described as teams in the true sense of the word
Gustavo Cavaliere / Hospitality industry expert – gustavo.cavaliere@gmail.com
Organisational theorists popularised the concept of team building in the second half of the 20th century. They argued that teams are the most appropriate means of carrying out highly complex tasks, so there is a need to develop strategies to create and nurture cohesive, functional teams.
The corporate world has embraced the idea. Companies now put a lot of effort and money into forming high-performance teams to reach their business goals.
But what is a team? There are two basic conditions that a team must meet. The first is that this group of people must have a common goal. The second is that they need to interact with each other to achieve that common objective.
This means a group of people is not necessarily a team. In some cases, people may aim to reach a common goal without interacting with each other, meaning they are not a team.
Work teams are not just about labour. They are about unwritten internal rules which determine the quality and effectiveness of the team. There are common patterns in building winning teams, with emphasis increasingly being put on the emotional component.
Interaction between members is essential for the success of any team. For lovers of sport, there are plenty of examples. Just think about those football teams filled with stars that should easily win any match if the quality of their individual players was the deciding factor, but which for one reason or another fail to deliver outstanding results.
In business as in sport, having the best players does not necessarily mean success. Often, the cohesion of a team and the collective motivation of its members are crucial in achieving the desired objective.
Lessons learned
Recent field studies indicate emotional intelligence is an important asset to look for when choosing team members. It often determines outcomes. More than just selecting people that are highly skilled technically, it is necessary to pick those that possess all the emotional tools needed to interact effectively with their peers. Only in this way can the team perform with excellence.
Apart from the right people, a high performance team must have a clear vision, and its members should be able to communicate effectively. It should also have established leaders, with the leaders delegating tasks and responsibilities to other team members, thus empowering them.
When assembling a new team, several questions usually arise. How can I be sure the people chosen are the best for the task? How can I ensure all team members share and understand the team’s vision? How can I develop leadership skills in people that hide their true potential? How should I assign tasks to team members and delegate responsibilities and devolve power to them?
It is important to understand each member’s emotions, capabilities and needs. From that starting point, an environment that allows individuals to develop to their full potential can be created.
When all team members begin to tread their individual growth path, when they recognise and accept their fields of expertise and start making the most of their resources for the group’s benefit, a new stage is reached. Everyone speaks the same language – that of growth – and processes can be improved, with mistakes becoming lessons learned. This is the moment when members stop looking for who to blame for unwanted results and instead start creating innovative ways to reach the goals set.
The common herd
When a team reaches this stage, it can start making big strides, with new skills and processes rapidly being added to its portfolio, starting an upward spiral. The members then become aware of the existence of the team as an entity in its own right, one with the ability to grow and bloom like an organism, with each stage of growth requiring new tools to be used and lessons to be learned.
The big question for each of Macau’s hospitality managers is whether he or she belongs to a team or just a randomly assembled group. Honest answers will give managers an idea of where they stand. They can serve as starting points for the creation and nurturing of true teams.
To get there, managers must first accept the challenge and then tread carefully the path of group and individual learning. Once a manager develops the skills needed to assemble high-performance teams and puts them to work, the teams created will reproduce themselves, creating a better working environment and delivering outstanding results.
Unfortunately, Macau’s hospitality industry is far from reaching that stage. What we see in the industry are thousands of individuals just doing their daily jobs, with no common vision or motivation whatsoever – a herd of employees too roughly thrown together to ever be mistaken for a team.
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Nixon then, China now
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As we reflect on China’s remarkable progress since 1972, it is also an opportune time to consider how China continues to fall short in overcoming systemic obstacles to long-term success
When U.S. President Richard Nixon embarked on his historic trip to China 40 years ago, he could not have imagined what his gamble would unleash. The [...] |
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Technical education
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One school’s revolutionary use of technology is creating regional standards
in broadening the education and employment horizons of its students
We frequently hear that Macau’s students lack open minds, creativity, ambition, innovation, flexibility and an entrepreneurial streak. They cannot, apparently, question why, nor can they think out of the box. We hear they are schooled into conformity, [...] |
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Truth in numbers
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The Statistics and Census Service seems a little too hasty in declaring victory in the government’s campaign against property speculation
In November of last year, a press release issued by the Statistics and Census Service began with a bold statement. Commenting on property transactions in the third quarter of last year, it declared: “Purchase and sale [...] |
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Take the direct path
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True political reform should mean the elimination of indirectly elected
and government-appointed legislators
The central government’s call for electoral reform in Macau shows its dissatisfaction with the political status quo here. The biggest problem is that the region has been unable so far to produce an efficient and popular government.
In Hong Kong, the government in Beijing evaluates [...] |
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Seizing sustainable development
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If we work together, we can help to steer our world onto a safer,
more equitable and more prosperous course
The world is on an unsustainable path and must urgently chart a new course forward, one that brings equity and environmental concerns into the economic mainstream. To do so, we must put sustainable development into practice now, [...] |
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The ethics of Internet piracy
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We need to find a way to maximise the truly amazing potential of the Internet, while properly rewarding creators
Last year, I told a colleague that I would include Internet ethics in a course that I was teaching. She suggested that I read a recently published anthology on computer ethics – and attached the entire volume [...] |
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Message in the music
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“Don’t worry, be happy” is more than a late-1980s pop tune, it is the key to boosting staff loyalty. A smile can be more valuable than money
This is not the story of Bobby McFerrin, the singer who made “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” an international smash and who, by the way, is visiting Macau early this [...] |
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Dreamtime in the Philippines
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If all goes well, the new casinos in Manila will boost the Philippine gaming industry to new heights. But that is a long way from saying the country can beat the big boys any time soon
I have long been impressed by the ability of successive administrations of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) to [...] |
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A question of control
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The government’s drive to forge new controls over the media has not been properly explained and ignores the wishes of both journalists and the public
The government has gone to great pains to try to revise the Press Law and the Broadcasting Law. It has already spent more than MOP3.5 million (US$438,000) in organising a deliberative [...] |
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What can Macau learn from the financial woes of Europe and the U.S.?
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The financial problems of Europe and the United States provide lessons on how to spend public funds in Macau
Governments in Europe and the United States have increased their expenditure on social welfare programmes and other public services since the end of World War Two. Many governments started paying for the added expense by issuing long-term [...] |
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Islamic finance unbound
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Its resilience, along with several other key features, underpins the high performance and growing popularity of Islamic finance
While uncertainty continues to roil global markets, driving many investors into full retreat, one part of the financial sector is expanding exponentially: Islamic-law-compliant financial assets have grown from about US$5 billion (MOP40 billion) in the late 1980s to [...] |
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For a few dollars more
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It is survival, not workers’ greed that forces the most low paid to change jobs
It is old news that job-hopping is a problem in Macau. What is more problematic is why it persists unabated. It is a problem more complex than simply demand for workers outstripping supply.
Employees come and go at a week’s notice, a [...] |
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Global finance’s supply-chain revolution
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The winning financial supply chains of the future will instil confidence that they offer safe, stable and efficient services to the most clients
In March 2011, the catastrophic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster that hit Japan halted production of key components on which many global supply chains depend. The sudden disruption of these essential materials from [...] |
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Green credibility gap
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Officials offer sweet words, saying they have a soft spot for the environment, but are yet to properly deliver on policy or its protection
In a report in this issue of Macau Business, the government reassures us that its concern for the environment remains as strong as ever and it is noticeably increasing the amount of [...] |
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Throwing sparks
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Hotels are desperately seeking leaders that can fire-up their staff by inspiring them
Leadership is a topic frequently discussed in the corporate world but seldom is its importance fully understood. True leaders are scarce and often mistaken for people who hold a managerial position but lack leadership skills, particularly the capacity to inspire those around them.
This [...] |
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The perils of 2012
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Global economic rebalancing is likely to accelerate, almost inevitably giving rise to political tensions
The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope. President John F. Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats. But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see [...] |
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Why capital flows uphill
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A country’s production structure may very well determine how much capital it supplies and how much it needs
At first, it seems difficult to grasp: global capital is flowing from poor to rich countries. Emerging-market countries run current-account surpluses, while advanced economies have deficits. One would expect fast-growing, capital-scarce (and young) developing countries to be importing [...] |
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Trouble in paradise
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It’s a wonderful tourism concept to promote Macau as the perfect place for a heavenly break but if we told tourists the whole truth about the city, would it be economic suicide?
Many of us, for whatever reason, can be “economical with the truth” by withholding material facts. In a court of law, witnesses swear to [...] |
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Should we ban cigarettes?
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Cigarettes, not guns or bombs, are the deadliest artefacts in the history of civilization
U.S. President Barack Obama’s doctor confirmed last year that the president no longer smokes. At the urging of his wife, Michelle Obama, the president first resolved to stop smoking in 2006, and has used nicotine replacement therapy to help him. If it [...] |
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| US |
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| DJIA |
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| Nasdaq |
2,839.08 |
-8.13 |
| S&P 500 |
1,316.63 |
+0.64 |
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| Europe |
|
| DJ Stoxx 50 |
2,192.85 |
+42.69 |
| DAX |
6,435.60 |
+104.56 |
| FTSE 100 |
5,403.28 |
+98.80 |
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| Asia |
|
| Nikkei 225 |
8,729.29 |
0 |
| Hang Seng |
19,039.15 |
0.00 |
| STRAITS TIMES INDEX |
2,823.75 |
+33.59 |
| S&P/ASX 200 |
4,121.00 |
0.000 |
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| 2012-5-22 |  | | 24°C ~ 28°C |
| | 2012-5-23 |  | | 24°C ~ 29°C |
| | 2012-5-24 | | | 24°C ~ 30°C |
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