A series of recent crises; financial, moral and ecological have their roots in human failures, not system failure. There is now growing consciousness that values and morals are not just desirable but are more important in contributing to human success and development. 

Character building has to come before skill development. The rationale is simple: if the person has the right values, skills follow. 

However if they only have skills and not values, he or she will not give his best. A business friend tries to reason, “Let’s say we can measure talent by a 1-10 factor. If I hire a man who has a 5, and is responsible, he will give me a 100% of his 5. But if I hire a smart guy with an 8, but irresponsible. He will just do the minimum, maybe only 50% of his talent, I only get 4. You tell me whom should I hire?
 

What is the purpose of education?

Is education about imparting knowledge and developing skill or nurturing responsible individuals? We celebrate kids with all As, but paid little attention to kids who do mediocre because they have to help out with family burdens?  Did we get our priorities right?

If the number of defaulters in our society is increasing, what is it suggesting? I guess the state of affairs must have deteriorated so badly for the PM to single this out and call attention to it.

Thinkers, educators, political and community leaders ought to pay serious attention.  Moral deterioration is not the luxurious musing of commentators and moralist, but ONE disease that will undermine the sustainability and competitive advantage of our growth. When people are irresponsible, they subtract value from the system, NOT add value.
 

How to make people responsible

So this begs the question: How to make people and businesses responsible. The recent earthquakes in Turkey and Taiwan have shown us that it is not the quake that killed people, but the violation of building codes resulting from the unholy alliance between irresponsible builders, bureaucrats and politicians. 

Let’s not relax just because Malaysia is not in the earthquake zone. The collapse of Highland Towers and other building problems showed that there are other ways we can be made to pay for such irresponsible acts.

Let’s take a look at another serious matter -- scholarship and education loans for example. Complaints abound defaulters and guarantors who set out to help, ended up burdened with liabilities. Think about it, should we use the community’s resources to develop a group of irresponsible young people? If they were irresponsible wouldn’t be better off leaving them out in the cold?
 

Moral Suasion

Asians like to use this age-old approach. Reality is this approach has its weakness.  Look around, we see immoral and irresponsible activities around. A most distinctive feature on our busy streets today is young people peddling the latest CD-ROMs and softwares! 

One businessman, trying to restructure himself (not his company) out of trouble told my merchant banker friend, “I am not interested in what is moral. Just tell me what is legal?” 

This makes one doubt the success of our education system and calls for the urgent need to reexamine our value system.

• Why are people only taking from the system and NOT giving back?
• What can we learn from, Harvard University, for example, where students can receive education for free, yet when they do well in life, they make endowments in millions back to their schools?
• How can we have more of the spirit , for example, of the Chinese school students who continue to support through donations, the poorly funded Chinese education system in this country?

How about our adults?

Shouldn’t we begin at the top? How persuasive can we be if the children are seeing irresponsible acts becoming a norm? What do we do with people who fail in their responsibility? It looks like there is a lot of cleaning up to do. 

There have been important individuals at the highest level of government, community and corporations who have not been disciplined a weenie bit for their irresponsible acts. I hope the PM spares some attention to address this neglected area. 

On the other hand, Entrepreneurs like Azman Hashim must be celebrated. He has expressed publicly how grateful he is to receive help for his bank and has vouched to work hard and pay them back as soon as possible. Looks like he is on track to do just that: Arab Malaysian Merchant Bankers has announced that it will repay all the RM800 million it borrowed from Danaharta few months ago! Such is the kind of responsible corporate citizen we celebrate.

On the other hand, one other individual whose company is bailed out by taxpayers’ money can still celebrate his remarriage in a flashy wedding of the century! We must be very careful to the kind of role models we are celebrating.
 

Why don’t we have the will to discipline?

Many Asians complained that Americans are not moralistic, and overly legalistic. The American legal system punishes their defaulters even for very minor irresponsible acts, so much so that the USA has the highest prisoners per population in the developed world! 

As society progresses, there is growing reluctance to discipline. Why is that so?  Often times, we confused discipline with compassion and humanity. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and good deeds always bring untended consequences. We therefore must remember “the will to discipline complements our capacity to love.”

Think about this, if students default on their study loans... 

• Should we impound their passport, stop all their access to future credit and publish their names in a database of defaulters so no employer would consider them?
• Should we develop a credit checking service (like a Rating Service for bonds) where employers and financial institutions will use before they hire or grant credit? 

Experience elsewhere in the world has shown us that there is always this temptation for humans to outwit the system, and choose the easy-way out. People are driven by self-interest, and have an amazing ability to calculate benefits and risks of their personal behavior.  Such human tendencies ought to be considered when designing institutional checks and balances.

Malaysians, as a society has to make choices. Responsible or Irresponsible members of society. Now we observed that widespread irresponsibility in the system has undermined our ability to grow. 

If the billions of dollars allocated to scholarship and study loans have produced educated and responsible individuals, and they pay their debts back because they are grateful for the help they received, and feel personally responsible to help those unfortunate ones -- If everyone pays back, we will have an un-depleting pool of funds that can continue to uplift generations of needy students. 

Our ability to discipline is the answer to the issue of responsibility and sustainable development.

Kuala Lumpur, October 12, 1999

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