How to Industrialize the Philippines

Maharlikan Solutions: From Employee to Employer

Mahalikanism is anti-imperial and pro-self-reliance. We suggest the following policies to convert slave-driven, dependent Philippine economy into an industrialized and independent Maharlikan economy

Tweak the Foreign Investment Act

A glaring flaw in the FSA Amendment is the lack of environmental representation. The DENR is not part of the regulatory body (IIPC). Only DTI, NEDA, and business chambers are the significant regulators. The DENR should be added and have the same powers as NEDA.

The FSA should be used to create semi-state owned corporations that will build dams, power generation, and transportation infrastructure.

For example, each province should have its own powerplant run by the government with 10-90 to 30-70 equity split, with the larger belonging to foreign investors who will provide the equipment and expertise. This will replace the centralized baseload configuration of the energy sector into a more diversified and independent one that can use solar, wind, geothermal, or hydro.

In this way, only excess capacity will be routed to the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM). In effect, this will reduce the impact of EPIRA and the influence of market forces (money) on the basic right to electricity.

Households and businesses can use their own solar power in the daytime and switch to the grid at night. This will remove the need for local batteries.

Open Religous Policy

The Europeans achieved technological and economic advancement after their Protestant Reformation removed the power of the Catholic system. This ushered in the enlightenment through Johanes Kepler, Isaac Newton, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Francois Quesnay.

Japan and China were keen to see the weakeness subtly imposed by Catholicism and took steps to ban it from their lands. Japan was successful in this, allowing it to keep its high intellecual levels, leading to its industrialization during the Meiji restoration.

Maharlikans are naturally spiritual. This is why we suggest the adoption of the original Maharlikan traditions as Buddhism or Hinduism (via yoga). This will put the country in line with Thailand, Vietnam, and Bali Indonesia in Southeast Asia, as well as China, Japan, Korea, and India.

Catholic morals can be replaced with Constitutional Virtues. These will be taught to all and will be the main mechanism to prevent corruption.

Aggresively Push Science and Math

Because of a mental staticity, Filipinos easily get into debt. On a national level, this is seen as the huge debts of the Marcos and Duterte administrations. In a common level, this is seen in farmers getting into debt from loansharks.

The debt is an effect of the lack of algebra ability. People get tempted by having instant money now that is paid in small amounts over a long period. So they take the loan without making any fundamental changes to their circumstances due to a lack of knowledge of science. This leads to a loss which they have to pay with another debt, causing debt slavery.

The West, Chinese, and Indians, on the other hand, have a culture of math. This allows them to be creditors and feed off the ignorance of people. This eventually leads to debt traps where poor countries sell their lands and resources to foreign creditors.

A mad push for Science and Math is essential to stop the loss of both economic and territorial sovereignty. Science can even be enshrined as its own religion:

• Hierarchy is detremined by the number of degrees, Masters or Doctorates, as is done in the West, China, and Korea
• The language of communication is made up of mathematical equation.
• It discriminates against stupidity, superstition, and myths, just as bigot Christians discriminate against Muslims and other religions

This should go hand in hand with the open religious policy.

Abolish Minimum Wage

After the ingredients of industrialization are acheived, as low cost energy and intellectual growth, the next step is to abolish both minimum wage and contractualization.

Contractualization is really the effect of minimum wage. To meet the high minimum wages, businesses reduce the benefits, leading to contractualization. This is because there is not much productivity in the economy to pay for both wages and benefits.

This low productivity is in turn is caused by overpopulation:

• Instead of one child getting money for tuition in a good school, having many children splits up the tuition as to afford only inferior schools, or even no education for the other children
• Instead of 100,000 workers using a train meant for 100,000 passengers to get to their workplace on time, a population of 400,000 will cause a congestion in transportation, causing a delay for all of them.

This overpopulation is caused by the Roman Catholic system*. The Philippine ban on population control leads to an oversupply of Filipinos which lowers productivity and makes them cheap. This causes them to move overseas as cheap labor.

An open religous policy will legalize abortion and divorce. This will reduce population growth. Instead of relying on an external savior (as what Filipinos do), the Maharlikan will rely on his own skills, intellect, fellow-feeling, and constitutional virtues. This will allow a independent Maharlikan entrepreneurship mentality instead of the dependent Filipino employee mentality.

More people will quit their jobs to be entrepreneurs who band together as partnerships or corporations. It will be easier to start a business when utilities are cheap and there are no rules on monetary wages. The important thing is that the employer abides by the Labor Code as well as pay into social security.

The freedom of wages, and the rich ecosystem of entrepreuneurs, will entice higher quality foreign investors who can now depend on local suppliers for support. These are different from the low quality foreign investors who merely go into mining and extraction of natural resources.

Examples of advanced countries which have no minimum wage are:

• Denmark
• Iceland
• Norway
• Singapore
• Sweden
• Switzerland

Legalize Barter Trade

Our proposed bayanihan economy is based on points as a store of value . This makes it a kind of delayed barter system that is based on morals instead of money, specifically pakikipagkapwa. This would make entrepreneurship cheaper since morals (trust, integrity, honesty) are free yet very expensive.

According to historian Chau Ju Kua , barter was the natural commercial system very effectively used by Maharlika. So far, barter is only legal in Sulu through the Mindanao Barter Council.

Unknown to many, the British economist EF Schumacher proposed a similar international barter system called multilateral clearing wherein all countries act as one entity in a ‘pool’. This is opposite of the currency union of the EU, and world trade system which uses the US Dollar as an international reserve currency.

In Schumacher’s system, instead of the exports of Country A competing with Country B, the foreign trade of both countries are unified as to act like local trade. In this way, a country can industrialize or ‘agriculturalize’ faster.

The Philippines can implement multilateral clearing to export its way to pay the Covid-19 debts through the export of bananas, coconuts, and services. This will allow the government to free up its budget so that it can have money to incubate industry and continue the pre-Macapagal policies.

Summary

The Philippines fell from its Industrialization path because of neoliberal policies from Diosdadao Macapagal, which continues to this day as rice tariffication promoted by his daughter Gloria Arroyo.

Such a system really benefits the world of international finance, which to Adam Smith is really unproductive labor – if everyone could barter for anything, then there would be no need for finance nor money and the costs and manpower in maintaining them.

Therefore, to be a strong economy that is not dependent on China or the West, we suggest the following overhauls:

1. Use the Foreign Investment Act to create semi-state-owned corporations to reduce the cost of utilities as the base of the economy, while protecting the environment
2. Adopt an open religious policy to make the Catholic church insignificant and stop the stifling of critical thinking and mental independence
3. A super-aggressive adoption and promotion of science and technology as if it were a religion, as a replacement to Catholicism (and extreme Islam)
4. Abolish both Minimum Wage and Contractualization while encouraging entrepreneurship to get rid of the employee mentality and become more like the Netherlands
5. Legalize barter trade to further reduce the cost of finance and avoid debt slavery and the loss of sovereignty