Miah Learns to Write

Photo by Eldon Vince Isidro on Unsplash Joseph de Maistre, a political philosopher, once wrote, “Every country gets the government it deserves,” and “In a democracy, people get the leaders they deserve.” With all that’s happening in the world today, we often turn to our leaders to establish order and guide their people. But in the same breath, we almost always put the blame on our leaders when things go wrong. I think this has been the case for liberal democracies across the board and it makes me wonder, “What is it with people? What in the world are they thinking?” I first heard the quote above from my PI 100 – Rizal professor. Now you might think, “Why were you discussing that in a Rizal class? What does that have to do with Rizal?” It’s actually a long story that involves several crash courses in sociology, political science, philosophy, and history. But to cut the story short, we discussed the revolution that Rizal wanted to launch in the Philippines and how he was going abo...

From: AP via Phil. Daily Inquirer Lately I have been thinking about the recent events in the Philippines and I came up with a bizarre theory about the war on drugs campaign by the administration which I hope would not be the case because I find it more appalling than the current situation. In my economics class, we talked about how a country grows and develops, as measured by the gross domestic product or national income, through the perspective of the Solow growth model (Neoclassical growth theory) and the endogenous growth model. Basically, these models presume that a country's capacity to save or invest, given a closed economy, determines how fast it would grow, and the saving rate is variable that affects growth. Other factors also influence the growth of the economy such as the population growth rate and rate of technological change or advancement. From our analysis, we can infer that a larger population would require a smaller allocation of resources for the economy and...

From Grantland I have been mulling over my internal debate of whether the Philippines should actually sever its ties with the US or not especially since our President had mentioned it in one of his press conferences to which his statement was clarified by various members of his cabinet to simply refer to the political and economic independence from the US, and being a lawyer he is definitely savvy with the legal aspects of his role but often having a very pointed and impulsive rhetoric. However, being the head of the state, whatever he says becomes policy much like the new US President who is much criticized for the policies that he is advocating. Of course, the question is not as simple as I would like to think it to be because being a part of an increasingly global landscape, it would not fare well for us, no pun intended, to cut ties from the international community, however, asserting our identity, independence, and our sovereignty is much needed despite the difficulties of t...

"Change has come." It's been over three months since the turn of the new administration in the Philippines and exactly 100 days on October 8. There have been much controversy and attention surrounding us during that time and so much has been said on both sides of the spectrum but I want to pull away from the noise of it all. I want to take a step back and make my thoughts clear. I just want to lay my thoughts on the table and let people think about them. Many, if not all, people wanted change for the Philippines and ultimately, we place that responsibility upon the shoulders of our government. When change does not happen, we become dissatisfied and at times, turn our backs on the people we voted for. Look at how people changed their minds about the former President Noynoy Aquino. He had tons of supporters at the beginning of his administration and so many of those become critics just before he leaves. It is quite interesting to observe the way people react to events a...