Wednesday, July 28, 2004

De Venecia pushes two-child policy

"Our resources can only afford a small population and the two-child policy is part of my strategy to save the nation because overpopulation will kill the nation," de Venecia told dzMM.
the overpopulation myth remains strong and popular among our societal elites because of its easy and uncomplicated message: get rid of the starving rather than feed them.

although it seems that de venecia's proposal doesn't approximate the extremeness of the "one child policy" of china, it is nonetheless a terrible sign. it surely marks a phase where the philippines is slowly sliding down that slippery slope. even if our descent has been slower than the rest and in a different direction, the mere fact that myths are seriously entertained as possible origins of government policies should be something worth babbling publicly about, especially if it entails destroying myths!

the nation needs to be saved indeed, but not from the very people who make it up, but the policies which keep them in squalor and poverty. in fact, for this 2-child policy alone, the nation should be saved from de venecia.

i prefer that the philippines undergo a renaissance, a rebirth of self-discovery and freedom from the mind-numbing tutelage of the rich and powerful. together with the rest of the world we have been in fact experiencing this phenomenon through the internet. new industries, businesses and services are growing because of it. what the filipino needs is creativity and the risk-seeking drive to grab every little opportunity that will come. the poor will benefit eventually and they will be needed, for they will make up the future market economy of the philippines. in this sense, we actually need them to be more and not less. but we also need them to be more economically relevant, that is, they should have more purchasing power. this is what everybody should be concerned about, not the number of poor people we have, for if we address this properly, we would have created for ourselves assets out of liabilities.

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