2/13/2013

How much weight to carry around?


Do you want to walk around with 60kg, 100kg or 150 kg as your body weight? Between 60 to 100kg I think many could still feel quite comfortable to move around with their daily life routines. Beyond that, to carry more than a 100kg of body mass, getting around is not going to be easy and there are many other negative side effects. The first part is to keep and maintain that weight, it is going to be very costly in the consumption of food and medical services/products. Even the whole wardrobe got to be changed, as well as the furniture.

On the lighter side of 100kg, living is that much easier, and that much cheaper. One does not need to eat a pail of rice and all the meat and vegetables to go with, maybe a bit obese but not too heavy on the knees and the feet and the heart. There is no need to eat like a glutton, wasting so much food that is totally unnecessary. The intake of a 150kg is going to be more than twice that of a 60kg, and more of everything.

This is a very simple analogy of what a population of 5m, 6m and 7m is going to be like. If we can get along fine with 5m, why pushing for 6m or more? Can we live with 5m and remain healthy? The Govt’s view is that we are hitting a crisis of a life time if we don’t go the 7m way. The reasons given were not convincing and never look like anything of a crisis. There will be major adjustments that needed to be made. The adjustments are much easier at the current level than when it balloons to 7m. It will then be a 7m kind of problem.

There is often the call to be mean and lean and fighting fit. 7m is not going to be fighting fit but going to slow down everything as the cost to sustain a 7m population is going to be very much more difficult and the returns will be marginal. The fact that the GDP will only grow by 2 – 2.5% for a 100k increase of heads annually just does not make reasonable sense. Why are the social and other costs and consequences not spelt out for the people? So far everyone has been told of the good things but no one is telling the bad part.

We all know what it is like of a 150kg body. The similarities need no imaginations.

6 comments:

virgo49 said...

Water agreement with the Federal Govt ends in 2021.

Have to be under their mercy again. Also do not who will be in charge.
Newwatet plant unforeseen circumstances break down. All gonna drink their own urine.

Have to use the army as threat to go fir a war if they want to shut up the water supply.

Think good times are forever. Big recession and great depression everybody fighting for survial, will start killing one another.

Chinese saying No burden take burden to carry

Anonymous said...

Another Chinese saying: Scratching the painful part rather than the itchy part.

That is what the PAP is doing trying to import more foreigners. They really have run out of ideas inside their tightly closed political box.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

Another scaremongering piece by redbean, using the RIDICULOUS analogy of human obesity.

With so much analogy and metaphor very soon this discussion will turn into a Malay pantun or Chinese opera :-)

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. -- the late, great Christopher Hitchens (whom I miss very much).

Anonymous said...

Everyone is entitle to his and her view and opinion.
And every other one is free to agree or disagree.
No harm saying your piece.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

Let me repeat what virgo49 said in another way. Another 1.7m people is another 1.7m people to house, to feed, to provide jobs to, and 1.7m of problems to deal with.

The 1.7m people is not just to bring growth and benefits. It has a dark and dangerous side that would become a huge burden. Why create the burden and carry the burden?

Virgo 49 said...


Right right Mr Redbean Sir, you said it 100 percent better than me.

St one time they said STOP AT TWO and gave us all sorts of frightening scenarios of what will happen if we do not handbrake our population.

Even give us dozens of condoms in family planning clinics fir a dime.

Not enough water, food jobs etc.
Now wants 6.9 when we already cannot breathe at this current 5.3.

Should be back to 2.2 and have enough jobs, food and water for our own. Why itchy backsides go and adopted another 1.7 to make sure they are enough for them.