How to Fix the Philippines with Maharlika 2050

The previous post explained the problem with the Keynesian Dutertenomics, which is embodied in the neoliberal economic plan called “Ambisyon 2040” by Arsenio Balisacan.

Society Subsidizing the Rich

The main flaw of that plan was that it catered to the merchant class of society and neglected the other 3 classes . That class is made up of business and monied interests.

A society needs all 4 classes to be in good shape just as a human body needs all its organs working properly. A weakness in one organ leads to disease or even death.

With the 3 classes weakened, the Philippine economy easily collapsed after pandemic struck. To get back on its feet, it had to incur a huge Php 12 trillion debt.

The debt is in money which is the expertise of the monied interests. Thus, the solution to the problem created by the merchant class is also facilitated by that same merchant class.

It would be like getting thieves to be in charge of security in your estate. They would allow expert burglaries which can only be solved by themselves to keep themselves employed and relevant while gaining commissions from those burglars. This leads to a double revenue stream to help keep them in power for a very long time until someone can connect the dots and expose their scam.

Such a genius scheme in macroeconomics really began in the 1970s after the Nixon shock. Billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham explains:

The profit maximization doctrine of the merchant class stops growth. And so the merchant class lobbies for public debt, as Keynesian “deficit spending”. This is really paid for by the entire society.

Thus, the public subsidizes the lavish lifestyle of the overgrown merchant class.

Debt transfers the present huge burden and spreads it to the future in smaller chunks. Instead of one huge oppression now, the oppression is imposed gradually and with increasing weight.

Here, we explain the proper solution as Maharlika 2050 which puts the merchant class back in line with the other classes, specifically by:

• overhauling Filipino Catholic-Islamic mentality into Maharlikan Science-Math thinking
• repealing dual citizenship in order to raise revenues
• banning crypto and NFT to reduce inflation and global warming
• hybrid PPP to create green energy and food sovereignty
• traditional barter trade to insulate against financial and debt crises

The Invisible Colonial Curse

The main problem of the country is poverty and inequality brought by years of colonial and neocolonial rule.

• The colonial rule was done through Spain and its military and Church. This is the dominance of the militant class (Spanish navy) and the philosopher class (Spanish Catholic Church)
• The neocolonial rule was done through the US and its mercant-class financial system (debt and equity-globalization)

These 2 phenomena stifle the natives (populist class) who end up as:

• overseas slaves called OFWs (overseas Filipino workers)
• lowly call center agents

This is very different from advanced countries which are the employers of those OFWs and call center agents.

The Maharlikan Plan

To convert a nation of slaves and employees into a respectable one of productive pioneers and innovators (and be relevant on the world stage , we change the identity of the Philippines into Maharlika .

The very first step is to establish a moral system based on constitutional virtues chosen by the people. We suggest 8 virtues:

1. Katotohanan (Truth)
2. Puso (Heart)
3. Pagtitimpi (Self-control)
4. Paggalang (Respect)
5. Talino at Kakayahan (Intellect and Skill)
6. Sipag at Pagkukusa (Hard work and Initiative)
7. Bayanihan (Cooperation)
8. Paggalang sa Kalikasan (Environmentalism)

These define what a Maharlikan is. These are not hard-coded, but can be changed every few years.

France has its own version of constitutional virtues as:

• Liberty
• Equality
• Fraternity

With this new identity, the people stop being Filipinos or subjects or employees of King Philip, and become Maharlikan, an independent people with their own mind.

These virtues can lead to a new culture and rules that can replace the morals of Spanish Catholicism and American liberalism. They will be the template for policy-changes that can be implemented until the 2050’s when our model predicts a big social change to happen.

1. Open Religious Policy (Truth)

The main obstacle to identity is the Catholic and Islamic religions that were created in Europe and Arabia, respectively. Those countries are not tropical, not archipelagos, nor have many natural disasters like Maharlika.

Moreover, those religions had a political agenda that serves the interests of Europe and Arabia. For example:

• Christianity depicts God as a white male in the sky. This makes Christian Filipinos subconsciously think that whites are superior. This does not afflict the Muslim Filipinos who can criticize Western ideas and policies
• Islam requires Muslims to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. This makes Muslim Filipinos spend for that trip which is a clear benefit to Saudi Arabia’s economy, and a loss to the Philippine economy because the Saudis are not obligated to visit the Philippines in return.

An open religious policy can:

• stop overpopulation by allowing abortion and contraception
• stop domestic violence by allowing divorce
• reduce the incidence of terrorism like the Marawi seige
• when combined with policy-change #6, spur critical thinking and raise the people’s intellectual level by increasing the variety of abstract cognitive experiences
• increase productivity by replacing formal prayer (with its overhead) with informal ideation

2. Single Citizenship and Leasehold (Heart)

Dual citizenship allows a person to have a safety and revenue from another country while spending it in Maharlika where prices are lower. This builds his ego over the single-citizens who have no such safety nor overseas revenue.

A clear example is how the owner of ABS-CBN disobeyed constitutional rules against foreign ownership of media.

Removing dual citizenship thus gives the government power over its own citizens. It also prevents dual citizens from owning land and other assets which inflate those prices for single citizens.

Those ex-dual citizens will then be treated as foreign permanent residents who will have to sell their assets and pay for visa renewal and other restrictions. These will lower asset prices while giving more revenue to government to pay for the huge 12 trillion peso debt. This policy thus makes the rich pay for the debt, in line with Adam Smith’s taxation maxim quoted earlier.

This policy also leads to leasehold and freehold system which is different from the private property system inherited from the US. This is important in calculating a ‘just compensation" which will not be disadvantageous to the government.

3. Federalism (Self-control)

The Philippines currently has a unitary form of government because it followed administrative system established by the Spanish. The problem is that Maharlika was originally a confederation and without a single ruler. This is because it is made up of many small islands and not a single land mass.

A unitary government on such a land will lead to feudalism wherein the local governments act like vassals of imperial Manila (the capital of Maharlika). An example is how warlords were allowed by the president to keep private armies .

This contributes to rent-seeking and low productivity since the people are under a leader that owes his rule to Manila instead of the locals.

Maharlikanism suggests a federation of 27 states that will spur and maximize the productivity of the people.

The federal government will then be in charge of semi-state owned corporations that will build dams, power generation, and transportation infrastructure for the states. This is because large inftrastructure often crosses state lines.

• For example, each province should have its own powerplant run by the federal government with 10-90 to 30-70 equity split, with the larger belonging to 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 centralized 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.

4. Bicameral Parliament (Respect)

The current political system has the president and vice president elected by popular vote. Such a system favors popular people instead of skilled ones.

To solve this, we propose a modified parliamentary system where:

• the people elect local representatives
• those representatives elect 27 senators, as well as parliamentarians for the National Assembly
• those senators choose a president and a vice president from among themselves

In this way, the representatives and senators can choose from themselves who would have the actual skills to lead the country.

5. Barter Trade (Cooperation-Bayanihan)

The federalized system will be ideal for our proposed bayanihan barter economy which is based on points as a store of value .

A point is pegged to 1 kilogram of NFA rice. This will implement Adam Smith’s grain-based valuation . This is superior to cryptocurrency and which is pegged to nothing. In fact, the chronic inflation from 2020 is caused by crypto*.

*Instead of people putting their money in the bank which the bank can lend to producers, they put their money into crypto which produces nothing and even wastes electricity. This waste and lack of production contributes to inflation.

A grain-based system will make the economy secure from inflation and financial crises, which we predict to happen in a few years. This system give importance to agriculture and will be the basis of the Maharlikan cooperative system.

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

This federal barter system can then be extended to foreign trade. 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’. His system was his alternative to:

• the currency union of the EU
• the world trade system which uses the US Dollar as an international reserve currency.

In Schumacher’s system, the exports of Country A to Country B is paid for by the fund of Country A. This fund is replenished or paid back by exports to Country A. In this way, foreign trade becomes local trade, making trade wars obsolete. It will also help countries in the pool to 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 industrialization policies of Magsaysay and Garcia.

6. Open Education Policy (Intellect)

The real advancement of the US, Europe, and Singapore comes from the multicultural, harmonious nature of their society. This diversity gives their people a wide range of cognitive experiences which builds diverse pathways in their brain, allowing them a wider range of ideas and mental processes.

This is embodied by the Romans who learned of different technologies from the tribes that they conquered. Likewise, the Meiji Japanese learned by sending their intellectuals to the West to learn modern ways.

This is very different from Philippine mentality where students only want to graduate just to get it over with.

This Maharlikan policy calls for a repeal of Article 14 Section 4 Item 2 which is biased towards schools owned by religions. This repeal is consistent with the Open Religious Policy by adding schools, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Islamic, and Hindu, that are not based on Western religion or culture.

The purpose is for the growth of intellect, culture, and employment.

For example, a Japanese school might set up a Philippine branch to bring elementary Japanese education to Filipinos who can eventually work in Japan armed with the proper language and cultural skills. The same is true for those who want to work in the Middle East, Hongkong, Singapore, etc.

Such schools can be subsidized by their governments. In this way, those countries share in the burden of educating the less-educated. This leads to mutual benefit by raising the quality of OFWs.

Moreover, those students can add foreign ideas and skills to enrich the Maharlikan pool of talent. This will spur innovation which will then invite foreign capital naturally. This will also lead to hybrid cultures, food, music, arts, which can be used for tourism.

At the moment, the Philippines only has Western ideas and systems as a consequence of Spanish and American colonization.

7. No Minimum Wage and Contractualization (Hard work)

Contractualization is 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, reducing their productivity.

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, called Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).

*The Roman Empire relied on military dominance through its citizen-army. This is why it encouraged marriage and banned divorce among Romans and disproved of abortion. Maharlika is not an empire and so such Catholic policies are irrelevant.

8. Tree-Planting Employment (Environmentalism)

Lastly, the environment should be enshrined because it is the most cost effective protection against global warming and natural disasters.

Currently, Western countries advocate massive spending on green energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such a solution really favors the finaciers and engineering companies who will prosper at the expense of taxpayers.

A more sustainable solution is to use trees themselves to reduce greenhouse gases . Trees work for free and can maintain themselves after some time.

The government can barter food and other non-monetary items in exchange for the labor for tree-planting and maintenance (such as mangroves in coastal areas). This will:

• drive employment while providing welfare, as an alternative to ayuda and univesal basic income
• enrich the soil naturally
• prevent erosion and floods
• raise land values

How It Can Be Implemeted in 5 Phases

The plan can be implemented in phases, just like what we suggested for Afghanistan

By 2052, the problems of the Philippines will be finished and Maharlika will have arrived as an industrialized country or at least be closer to such a goal.