https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/harvard-mckinsey-and-davos-are-paying-for-neoliberalisms-sins

This is a compelling analysis of how three pillars of the neoliberal establishment—Harvard University, McKinsey & Company, and the World Economic Forum—are facing significant crises that reflect broader problems with the neoliberal model itself.

The Core Argument

Wooldridge argues that these institutions didn’t just benefit from neoliberalism – they actively shaped and reinforced it. Harvard’s economics department and business school provided intellectual legitimacy and trained the leaders who implemented neoliberal policies. McKinsey became the consulting firm of choice for corporations embracing deregulation and financialization. The WEF created the networking hub where this new global elite could meet and validate their worldview.

The Current Crisis

Each institution faces distinct but related problems:

• Harvard is caught between Trump’s political attacks and the consequences of its own transformation into a global, elite institution that’s become disconnected from broader American society
• McKinsey has suffered significant reputational damage from ethically questionable work, including advising on opioid marketing strategies and working with authoritarian regimes.
• The WEF is dealing with serious allegations against its longtime leader, Klaus Schwab, including financial improprieties and abuse of power.

The Deeper Problem

What’s most interesting about Wooldridge’s analysis is his identification of their shared “original sin”: an obsession with material success and winning at any cost. This led to:

• Uncritical celebration of globalisation and technical expertise over wisdom
• Disconnection from local communities and concerns
• Mistaking mathematical models and management theories for actual understanding of human behaviour and leadership

Looking Forward

Wooldridge suggests that these institutions can only recover by embracing a different model—one emphasising “service, belonging and wisdom” rather than “success, globalisation and expertise.” His prediction is that Harvard might emerge stronger by shedding recent excesses, McKinsey has permanently damaged its reputation, and the WEF may be in terminal decline.

The piece effectively captures how institutions that were supposed to create meritocratic pathways to success may have instead created an insular elite that lost touch with the societies they were meant to serve. It’s a valuable lens for understanding some of the populist backlash against globalisation and expertise that we’ve seen in recent years.

The Architecture of Self-Reinforcing Neoliberal Systems

Institutional Triangulation

The Harvard-McKinsey-Davos triangle exemplifies how neoliberal institutions reinforce each other through what I call “institutional triangulation”:

Knowledge Production → Implementation → Validation

• Harvard produces the intellectual framework and trains the elite
• McKinsey translates theory into corporate practice and spreads best practices
• Davos provides the networking space where success is celebrated and orthodoxy reinforced

This creates a closed loop where:

1. Ideas are academically legitimised at elite universities
2. Practices are standardised and disseminated by consulting firms
3. Networks are maintained through exclusive forums that celebrate success
4. Personnel circulate between all three spheres, carrying ideas and relationships

Mechanisms of Self-Perpetuation

1. Elite Circulation and Credential Inflation

• The same individuals transition between Harvard (education), McKinsey (consulting), government positions, and corporate leadership roles.
• This creates “policy networks” where the same people make decisions across different institutional contexts.
• Credentials become increasingly important, creating barriers to entry that protect the existing elites.

2. Intellectual Hegemony

• Economic departments transform from political economy to mathematical modelling, making alternative viewpoints seem “unscientific”
• Management theory is becoming increasingly technical, obscuring its political and ethical dimensions.
• Success metrics become narrowly defined around quantifiable outcomes.

3. Material Incentives

• High compensation in consulting and finance attracts top talent
• Stock options and performance bonuses align individual interests with neoliberal metrics
• Prestigious positions depend on accepting and advancing orthodox thinking

Singapore: The Perfected Neoliberal Model

Singapore represents perhaps the most sophisticated fusion of developmental state capacity with neoliberal principles, creating what scholars call “the neoliberal-developmental state” (The Neoliberal-Developmental State: Singapore as a Case Study, Eugene Dili Liow, 201). This makes it an ideal case study for understanding how neoliberal systems self-perpetuate.

Structural Features of Singapore’s System

Government-Linked Companies (GLCs) as Neoliberal Vehicles GLCs account for about 24% of the stock market’s total capitalisation and control over a tenth of the country’s economic output. Government ownership and the performance of government-linked companies: The case of Singapore – ScienceDirect. These companies operate commercially while maintaining government links, creating a unique form of state capitalism that:

• Provides the government with market-based tools for economic management
• Creates elite circulation between the public and private sectors
• Maintains the appearance of market competition while ensuring state influence
• Generates revenue streams that reduce dependence on taxation

The “Survivalist” Ideology: Singapore has adopted neoliberal globalisation due to a pervasive ideology of survivalism, which emerged after Singapore’s expulsion from Malaysia in 1965. Neoliberal Singapore: Nation-State and Global City | SpringerLink. This narrative creates:

• Permanent justification for pro-business policies
• Suppression of dissent as “threatening survival”
• Elite consensus around technocratic governance
• Public acceptance of inequality as necessary for competitiveness

Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms in Singapore

1. Technocratic Elite Circulation Singapore’s system creates seamless movement between:

• Civil service (especially the Administrative Service)
• GLCs and Temasek Holdings
• Multinational corporations
• Universities and think tanks

This circulation ensures policy consistency and ideological alignment across institutions.

2. Institutional Capture of Critique: As Singaporeans negotiate various rules and regulations, they form ties too one another and with the state. Neoliberal Morality in Singapore: How family policies make state and society. The system co-opts potential opposition by:

• Incorporating civil society organisations into governance processes
• Providing material benefits that create stakeholders in the status quo
• Using meritocratic selection to recruit potential critics into the system

3. “Extreme Neoliberalism” as an Export Model: Singapore seeds, promotes, and disseminates a hyper-exploitative model of free market economics, packaging it as “smart governance.” Singapore’s Extreme Neoliberalism and the COVID Outbreak: Culturally Centring Voices of Low-Wage Migrant Workers – PMC. This creates external validation and revenue streams while:

• Establishing Singapore as a hub for neoliberal expertise
• Creating international networks that reinforce domestic policies
• Generating consulting and advisory income

The Human Costs of Self-Reinforcement

Migrant Worker Exploitation Singapore’s bright futures exist alongside the criminalisation of migrant worker organising and the regulation of migrant worker presence through surveillance and police control. Singapore’s Extreme Neoliberalism and the COVID Outbreak: Culturally Centring Voices of Low-Wage Migrant Workers – PMC. The system maintains low labour costs by:

• Creating legal frameworks that prevent collective bargaining
• Using technology for surveillance and control
• Compartmentalising different classes of workers

Social Stratification The system creates multiple tiers of citizenship and belonging:

• Citizens with full political and economic rights
• Permanent residents with economic but limited political rights
• Foreign professionals with temporary privileges
• Migrant workers with minimal protections

Implications for Global Neoliberalism

Singapore’s model demonstrates how neoliberal systems can achieve stability through:

1. State-Market Fusion Rather than pure privatisation, Singapore demonstrates how states can utilise market mechanisms while maintaining control, thereby creating more resilient neoliberal arrangements.

2. Technocratic Legitimacy By emphasising technical expertise and measurable outcomes, the system deflects political criticism and maintains elite consensus.

3. Selective Inclusion The system maintains stability by providing pathways for advancement for some while excluding others, creating stakeholders in the status quo.

4. Ideological Flexibility Singapore adapts neoliberal principles to local conditions while maintaining core commitments to market logic and elite governance.

Vulnerabilities and Contradictions

Despite its apparent success, Singapore’s system faces growing tensions:

Rising economic inequality creates social pressures that challenge the system’s legitimacy, particularly among younger generations.

Demographic Challenges: Low birth rates and an ageing population create dependencies that strain the system’s sustainability.

Global Shifts Changes in the global economy and rising geopolitical tensions challenge Singapore’s position as a neutral hub.

Democratic Deficits and limited political participation create a potential for instability if economic performance falters.

The Singapore case demonstrates how neoliberal systems can achieve remarkable stability through sophisticated institutional design, while also revealing the human costs and inherent contradictions that may ultimately undermine their sustainability. The system’s very success in creating self-reinforcing mechanisms may also be its weakness, as it becomes increasingly complex to adapt to changing circumstances without threatening the interests of established elites.

Introduction: The Invisible Violence of Institutional Logic

Singapore’s transformation into a neoliberal showcase has created what sociologists call “institutional violence” – the systematic erosion of traditional social structures through the relentless application of market logic to human relationships. While celebrated globally as an economic miracle, this model has generated profound social divisions that threaten the very foundations of Singaporean society, particularly the family unit and communal bonds that historically provided meaning, stability, and identity.

The neoliberal institutional complex, comprising government-linked companies, multinational corporations, elite educational pathways, and technocratic governance structures, operates as a self-reinforcing system that systematically prioritises market efficiency over social cohesion. This analysis examines how these institutions have created unnecessary and destructive social divisions while undermining the traditional social fabric that once bound Singaporean communities together.

The Architecture of Social Fragmentation

The Meritocratic Stratification Machine

Singapore’s education system, internationally lauded for its academic excellence, serves as the primary sorting mechanism for neoliberal stratification. The system creates rigid hierarchies that fragment society along multiple dimensions:

Academic Streaming and Social Sorting: The early streaming system, beginning as early as Primary 3 with the Gifted Education Programme, creates permanent educational castes that determine life trajectories. This survivalist ideology was born after Singapore’s expulsion from Malaysia in 1965. Neoliberal Singapore: Nation-State and Global City | SpringerLink has evolved into a brutal competition where children as young as 9 are sorted into winners and losers, creating lifelong social divisions.

The system produces:

• Elite Track: GEP → Top secondary schools → Junior colleges → Overseas universities → Administrative Service/GLCs
• Middle Track: Express stream → Polytechnics/Local universities → Middle management
• Lower Track: Normal streams → ITE → Service sector employment

These educational pathways become social destinies, creating what Pierre Bourdieu called “symbolic violence” – the internalisation of hierarchies that make inequality appear natural and deserved.

The Scholarship Complex as a Social Divider: The scholarship system, particularly the President’s Scholarship and overseas scholarships, creates a Mandarin class that is disconnected from ordinary Singaporeans. Scholarship holders progress through elite institutions,, fromtop schools to Oxbridge and Ivy League universities, and secure seniore seniorcivil service poo forming formingnetworks that perpetuate their dominance.

This creates two parallel societies:

• The Anointed: Scholarship holders who see themselves as Singapore’s natural leaders
• The Ordinary: Everyone else, whose experiences and perspectives are systematically devalued

Economic Stratification and Family Dissolution

The Housing Ladder as Social Architecture. Singapore’s housing policy, while providing universal homeownership, creates a sophisticated stratification system that divides families and communities:

• Private Property Elite: Condominiums and landed property owners who form exclusive enclaves
• Executive Condominium Middle: Aspiring middle class trapped between public and private
• HDB Hierarchy: Multiple tiers from 3-room flats to executive apartments, each with distinct social status

This housing stratification breaks up extended families and traditional kampong-style communities. Grandparents in smaller HDB flats become physically and socially separated from successful children who move to private housing, severing intergenerational bonds that traditionally provided care, wisdom, and cultural continuity.

The Dual Economy’s Human Cost: Singapore’s economy operates on a dual structure that creates profound social divisions:

Financialised Elite Economy

• High-value services: Banking, consulting, law, medicine
• Globalised professionals earning $200k+ annually
• Lives revolving around CBD, expatriate communities, and international schools
• Cultural identification with global rather than local communities

Service Economy Underclass

• Retail, food service, transport, cleaning
• Singaporeans competing with foreign workers for wages
• Lives constrained by shift work, long hours, and economic insecurity
• Cultural preservation becomes a luxury they cannot afford

This dual structure means families often span both economies, creating internal tensions where successful children live fundamentally different lives from their parents and siblings.

The Foreign Talent Policy as Community Disruptor

Cultural Displacement in Elite Spaces: The aggressive recruitment of foreign talent has created “expat enclaves” in elite neighbourhoods, international schools, and high-value industries. This policy:

• Displaces local professionals from leadership positions in their own country
• Creates parallel societies where expatriates and locals rarely interact meaningfully
• Establishes English as the de facto language of success, marginalising local languages and cultures
• Transforms Singapore into a “hotel” rather than a home for its own citizens

Migrant Worker Apartheid Singapore’s bright futures exist alongside the criminalisation of migrant worker organising and the regulation of migrant worker presence through surveillance and police control. Singapore’s Extreme Neoliberalism and the COVID Outbreak: Culturally Centring Voices of Low-Wage Migrant Workers – PMC The systematic segregation of migrant workers creates a racialised underclass that serves elite comfort while being rendered invisible.

This apartheid system:

• Normalises the treatment of human beings as disposable economic units
• Creates psychological distance between Singaporeans and the workers who build and clean their society
• Undermines solidarity and empathy across economic and racial lines
• Teaches Singaporean children that some people matter less than others

The Destruction of Traditional Social Institutions

The Family Under Siege

Individualisation vs. Filial Piety Traditional Asian family structures emphasise collective responsibility, intergenerational care, and shared resources. Neoliberal individualisation systematically undermines these bonds:

Economic Pressures on Family Formation

• Housing costs require dual high incomes, delaying marriage and childbearing
• Career advancement demands geographic mobility that separates families
• Elder care becomes an individual rather than a collective responsibility
• Financial success becomes the primary measure of filial duty

The CPF System’s Atomising Effect The Central Provident Fund, while providing retirement security, atomises what were once collective family responsibilities:

• Individual accounts replace intergenerational wealth sharing
• Retirement becomes a personal financial problem rather than a family obligation
• Healthcare costs are individualised through Medisave, reducing family interdependence
• Housing purchases require individual rather than extended family resources

Cultural Erosion Through Educational Policy. The emphasis on English and global competitiveness has systematically weakened cultural transmission:

• Mother tongue languages become “heritage” subjects rather than living communication tools
• Traditional festivals have become commercial rather than spiritual occasions
• Cultural knowledge is outsourced to formal education rather than family transmission
• Children cannot communicate meaningfully with grandparents in their native languages

Community Bonds Under Market Logic

The Commodification of Social Relations Market logic has penetrated traditional spaces of community formation:

Religious and Cultural Organisations

• Temples and churches compete for members like businesses competing for customers
• Cultural associations become networking opportunities rather than community bonds
• Traditional mutual aid societies are replaced by commercial insurance
• Spiritual practices become self-improvement products

Neighbourhood and Civic Life

• Void decks become commercial spaces rather than community gathering places
• Hawker centres face gentrification pressures that displace traditional food cultures
• Community centres offer programs designed by bureaucrats rather than emerging from local needs
• Grassroots organisations become vehicles for government messaging rather than authentic community expression

The Professional Volunteering Complex. Even charity and community service have been professionalised and commodified:

• Volunteering becomes resume-building rather than genuine service
• Social work becomes technocratic case management rather than community organising
• NGOs compete for government contracts rather than advocating for systemic change
• Community development is managed by credentialed professionals rather than emerging from community leadership

Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms of Social Division

The Elite Circulation System

Institutional Capture of Social Mobility Singapore’s meritocratic institutions create the illusion of social mobility while actually reinforcing elite reproduction:

The Scholarship-GLC-Government Pipeline

• Top students receive scholarships that bind them to government service
• Government scholars move between the civil service and GLCs
• GLC leaders transition to private sector boards and advisory positions
• Private sector leaders are recruited into government advisory roles

This circulation creates a closed elite that:

• Shares similar educational backgrounds and worldviews
• Has limited exposure to ordinary Singaporeans’ daily struggles
• Makes decisions affecting millions while living in rarefied social bubbles
• Mistaketechnocratic competence for wisdom about human flourishing

The International School Segregation Elite families increasingly send children to international schools, creating a separate educational track that:

• Isolates privileged children from local culture and concerns
• Prepares them for global rather than local citizenship
• Creates cultural gaps between elite and ordinary families
• Establishes English-speaking, Western-oriented culture as superior

Economic Incentive Structures That Divide

The Competition Economy Singapore’s economic model creates zero-sum competition that undermines solidarity:

Educational Competition

• PSLE scores determine school placement, creating winner-loser dynamics among 12-year-olds
• University admission becomes family warfare over limited places
• TuThe tuitionndustry exploits parental anxiety, creating additional stratification
• Academic failure is treated as moral failure, damaging family relationships

Housing Competition

• BTO balloting creates artificial scarcity that pits families against each other
• Resale prices make housing wealth dependent on excluding others
• Upgrading pressures force families into unsustainable debt
• Location determines school access, making geography destiny

Employment Competition

• Foreign talent policy pits local professionals against global competitors
• Performance rankings create workplace cultures of individual advancement over collective success
• The gig economy eliminates job security and workplace solidarity
• Skills upgrading becomes an individual responsibility rather than a collective investment

Cultural Hegemony of Success

The Meritocratic Myth Singapore’s official narrative celebrates individual achievement while obscuring structural advantages:

Success as a Moral Virtue

• Wealth accumulation becomes evidence of personal worth
• Poverty is attributed to individual failings rather than structural inequality
• Social problems are solved through individual behaviour change rather than systemic reform
• Cultural values are subordinated to economic productivity

The Quantification of Human Worth

• Academic scores, income levels, and property values become proxies for human value
• Traditional measures of worth – wisdom, kindness, community contribution – are marginalised
• Family success is measured by children’s academic and economic achievements
• Elder value is reduced to their economic independence rather than their wisdom and experience

The Psychological and Social Costs

Mental Health Crisis as Social Symptom

The systematic erosion of traditional social bonds has created a mental health crisis that reflects deeper social fragmentation:

Youth Mental Health Rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among young Singaporeans reflect:

• Impossibly high academic and career pressures
• Social isolation due to competitive educational environments
• Loss of cultural identity and meaning systems
• Family relationships reduced to performance expectations

Elder Isolation. Traditional reverence for elders has been replaced by:

• Economic measures of elder worth
• Institutional care replacing family care
• Cultural knowledge dismissed as irrelevant to modern success
• Grandparents are unable to communicate with their grandchildren due to language barriers

Middle-Generation Squeeze The sandwich generation faces unprecedented pressures:

• Caring for ageing parents while raising competitive children
• Managing mortgage payments while saving for retirement
• Maintaining marriages under economic stress
• Balancing work demands with family responsibilities

The Erosion of Social Trust

Interpersonal Relationships Market logic has infected personal relationships:

• Dating becomes strategic networking for social advancement
• Friendships are evaluated for their utility rather than intrinsic worth
• Marriage becomes a merger of financial resources rather than an emotional partnership
• Parent-child relationships become investment strategies rather than unconditional love

Community Solidarity, Traditional mutual aid and collective responsibility have been replaced by:

• Individual insurance policies rather than community support systems
• Professional services rather than neighbourly assistance
• Government programs,s rather than grassroots mutual aid
• Commercial relationships rather than reciprocal obligations

Case Studies in Social Fragmentation

The Decline of Traditional Festivals

Chinese New Year as a Commercial Event. What was once the most critical family gathering has become:

• A retail opportunity for shopping malls
• A tourism promotion for international visitors
• A performance for multicultural harmony rather than authentic cultural expression
• An obligation rather than a celebration for many families

Traditional practices – like the reunion dinner being the most important meal of the year – are undermined by:

• Work schedules that don’t respect cultural priorities
• Geographic separation of extended families
• Generational gaps in cultural knowledge and language
• Commercial alternatives to family-centred celebrations

Hari Raya and Deepavali Commercialisation. Similar patterns affect other cultural celebrations:

• Religious significance subordinated to commercial opportunities
• Traditional foods replaced by convenient commercial alternatives
• Community celebrations have been replaced by family-centred events
• Cultural transmission is reduced to formal education rather than lived practice

The Void Deck Transformation

From Community Space to Functional Transit. HDB void decks were designed as community gathering spaces, but have become:

• Commercial rental spaces for events rather than spontaneous community use
• Regulated spaces requiring permits for simple gatherings
• Storage areas for individual families rather than community resources
• Transit zones people pass through rather than linger in

This transformation reflects the broader subordination of community needs to administrative efficiency and commercial logic.

The Hawker Centre as Metaphor

From Cultural Institution to Tourist Attraction, Hawker centres, once authentic community dining spaces, increasingly become:

• Heritage tourism products rather than living cultural institutions
• Rent extraction opportunities that displace traditional vendors
• Standardised food courts rather than diverse community expressions
• Nostalgic museums rather than evolving cultural spaces

Young Singaporeans often know hawker centres as tourist destinations rather than as spaces where their grandparents built community through shared meals and conversation.

Resistance and Alternative Possibilities

Grassroots Cultural Preservation

Despite institutional pressures, some Singaporeans resist cultural erosion:

Language Preservation Efforts

• Informal networks teaching dialect to grandchildren
• Community groups organising cultural events without government sponsorship
• Artists creating works that celebrate local rather than global culture
• Families deliberately choose to maintain multilingual communication

Community Garden Movements

• Residents are creating informal gathering spaces in HDB estates
• Intergenerational sharing of traditional agricultural knowledge
• Community-organised food sharing and mutual aid
• Resistance to the commodification of green spaces

Economic Alternatives

Cooperative and Mutual Aid Models. Some communities experiment with alternatives to pure market logic:

• Time banks where services are exchanged without money
• Community-supported agriculture that connects urban consumers with local farmers
• Skill-sharing networks that build community capacity
• Elder care cooperatives that provide alternatives to commercial services

Social Enterprise Experiments

• Businesses that prioritise community benefit over profit maximisation
• Worker cooperatives that share ownership and decision-making
• Community kitchens that preserve traditional food cultures
• Educational alternatives that emphasise holistic development over academic competition

Toward Social Regeneration

Reconstructing Community Bonds

Intergenerational Programming: Deliberate efforts to reconnect generations:

• Structured programs pairing elders with youth for skill sharing
• Community storytelling projects that preserve local history
• Language exchange programs between grandparents and grandchildren
• Shared housing experiments that bring different generations together

Neighborhood Revitalization

• Community organising that emerges from resident needs rather than government programs.
• Informal economic networks that build local resilience
• Cultural celebrations organised by communities rather than authorities
• Spaces are designed for lingering and conversation rather than efficient transit

Educational Reform for Social Cohesion

Holistic Development Models

• Schools that measure success through community contribution rather than just academic achievement
• Curriculum that includes local history, culture, and languages as core subjects
• Assessment methods that recognise diverse forms of intelligence and contribution
• Educational environments that foster cooperation rather than pure competition

Community-Centered Learning

• Learning that happens in communities rather than isolated institutions
• Elders as teachers of practical wisdom and cultural knowledge
• Students engaged in solving real community problems
• Education as preparation for citizenship rather than just economic productivity

Economic Models That Support Social Cohesion

Community Wealth Building

• Local procurement policies that keep wealth circulating in communities
• Community land trusts that prevent displacement
• Local currencies that strengthenneighbourhooddd economies
• Worker ownership models that share economic benefits

Care Economy Recognition

• Valuing unpaid care work an as essential economic contribution
• Policies that support family caregiving rather than forcing commercialisation
• Community care models that distribute caregiving responsibilities
• Economic security that allows people to prioritise relationships over pure income maximisation

Conclusion: The Choice Between Efficiency and Humanity

Singapore stands at a crossroads. The neoliberal institutional complex has delivered impressive economic growth and international recognition, but at enormous social cost. The systematic privileging of market efficiency over human relationships has created a society that is economically successful but spiritually impoverished, globally connected but locally fractured.

The self-reinforcing nature of these institutional arrangements means that change requires conscious political and social choices. The current system benefits those who have succeeded within it, giving them little incentive to recognise its human costs. The institutions themselves – schools, corporations, government agencies – are structured to reward behaviours that reinforce social division rather than social cohesion.

Yet the growing mental health crisis, declining birth rates, and social isolation suggest that even economic success cannot compensate for the loss of meaningful community bonds. Singaporeans across all social strata express nostalgia for a time when neighbours knew each other, when families shared meals regularly, and when success was measured by contribution to the community rather than just individual achievement.

The question is whether Singapore can evolve toward a model that maintains economic dynamism while reconstructing the social fabric, or whether the logic of neoliberal efficiency will continue its relentless erosion of the human bonds that make life meaningful. This is not just a policy choice but a civilizational one: What kind of society do Singaporeans want to bequeath to their children?

The answer will determine whether Singapore becomes a cautionary tale of how economic success can hollow out social meaning, or a model for how modern societies can consciously choose community over pure competition, wisdom over mere efficiency, and human flourishing over economic optimisation. The stakes could not be higher, for Singapore and for the world watching its experiment in technocratic governance.

The Meritocratic Machine: How Singapore’s Neoliberal Institutions Fracture Traditional Life

An Analysis Through the Life of Wei Ming

Prologue: The Promise and the Price

In the gleaming towers of Singapore’s Central Business District, where glass and steel stretch toward a perpetually humid sky, lies the culmination of one of the world’s most successful neoliberal experiments. Yet behind the economic miracle statistics and smart nation narratives, individual lives unfold in ways that reveal the profound tensions between institutional efficiency and human meaning. This is the story of how Singapore’s self-reinforcing neoliberal institutions systematically dismantle the traditional social fabric, told through the life of one Singaporean caught between two worlds.

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Chapter 1: The Sorting (Age 9-18)

The Primary School Leaving Examination: First Fracture

Wei Ming still remembers the morning his PSLE results arrived. His mother’s hands trembled as she opened the envelope, not from anticipation but from the weight of knowing that these numbers would determine not just her son’s secondary school placement, but the trajectory of their entire family’s social standing.

Score: 248. Good enough for a neighbourhood school, not good enough for the elite institutions that his tuition teacher’s other students were heading to.

The Meritocratic Violence Begins

This moment illustrates the first systematic fracture in traditional family relationships. In pre-neoliberal Singapore, a child’s worth was measured across multiple dimensions, including filial piety, community contribution, practical skills, and moral character. The PSLE condenses all its complexity into a single number that determines social destiny.

Wei Ming’s grandmother, Ah Ma, who had raised seven children through the Japanese Occupation and post-independence poverty, could not understand why a 12-year-old’s academic performance should cause such family anguish. “Smart boy, good heart, help family – enough already,” she would say in Hokkien, her words dismissed as “old-fashioned thinking” by a system that had made academic achievement the sole measure of value.

The institutional logic was clear and cruel: Wei Ming’s score meant he was sorted into the “Express stream” at a neighbourhood secondary school, not the elite track, but respectable enough. More importantly, it meant his parents would need to work harder, save more, and sacrifice their own needs to fund the additional tuition, enrichment classes, and educational supplements needed to keep him competitive.

Family Bonds Under Economic Pressure

Wei Ming’s father began working overtime at his logistics job, missing family dinners to earn money for additional tuition. His mother, who had stopped working when Wei Ming was born, returned to part-time administrative work. Sunday family outings to East Coast Park were replaced by math enrichment classes.

The traditional Chinese value of family time – the leisurely Sunday dim sum sessions where three generations would gather, where Ah Ma would tell stories of old Singapore, where uncles and aunties would catch up on each other’s lives – became casualties of the academic arms race.

“Cannot waste time,” became the family mantra. Every hour had to be optimised for academic advancement. Even Chinese New Year visits were shortened because Wei Ming had holiday homework to complete.

Secondary School: The Competition Deepens

At Tanjong Katong Secondary School, Wei Ming encountered the full force of Singapore’s educational stratification system. The school itself was caught between worlds – not elite enough to guarantee university admission, too academic to focus on practical skills.

His form teacher, Mrs. Lim, was kind but stressed. With 40 students in the class and pressure to improve the school’s ranking, she had little time for individual attention. The message was clear: sink or swim based on your performance in the examination.

The Erosion of Community Learning

In traditional Chinese culture, learning happened within community contexts. Elder siblings taught younger ones, neighbours shared knowledge, and extended family members contributed different skills and perspectives. Learning was collaborative and embedded in social relationships.

The Singapore system replaced this with privatised, competitive learning. Wei Ming’s parents hired individual tutors for Math, Science, and English. Group study evolved into strategic alliance-building rather than genuine collaboration – students shared information that benefited them while withholding insights that might give others a competitive advantage.

The neighbourhood kopitiam where uncles once gathered to discuss everything from soccer to politics became irrelevant to Wei Ming’s world. He had no time for such “unproductive” activities, and besides, the conversations were in dialects he barely understood.

Language as Cultural Barrier

By Secondary 3, Wei Ming could barely maintain a conversation with Ah Ma in Hokkien. His Mandarin was formal and academic, having been learned from textbooks rather than through living relationships. English had become his primary language—the language of success, of academic achievement, and of future career prospects.

This linguistic shift represented a profound cultural fracture. Ah Ma’s stories of pre-independence Singapore, her knowledge of traditional festivals and customs, her understanding of family relationships and community obligations – all of this wisdom was locked in a language Wei Ming was losing.

When Ah Ma fell ill during his O-Level year, Wei Ming found himself unable to comfort her in her native tongue. He could discuss calculus and molecular biology in English, but couldn’t express love and concern in the language of his grandmother’s heart.

The O-Level Results: Destiny Confirmed

Wei Ming scored 12 points for his O-Levels – a respectable, but not exceptional, result. Good enough for a polytechnic, not good enough for a Junior College. His parents were disappointed but tried to hide it. “Polytechnic is also good,” his mother said, but her voice carried the weight of lowered expectations.

The First Career Pressure

At 16, Wei Ming was already being sorted into Singapore’s economic hierarchy. The polytechnic track meant a technical career, such as engineering, business, or information technology. Good middle-class prospects, but not the elite professional track that led to the highest echelons of Singaporean society.

His cousin, Wei Jie, who had scored 6 points, was heading to Raffles Institution for A-Levels, then presumably to NUS Law or Medicine, then to the fast track of Singapore’s professional elite. Family gatherings became exercises in comparison and hidden judgment.

“Wei Jie is going to be a lawyer,” relatives would say with pride. “Wei Ming is also doing well,” his parents would respond defensively, “going to study engineering.”

The traditional Chinese value of different paths to success—the merchant, the scholar, the craftsman—each respected in their own way—had been replaced by a rigid hierarchy where only certain forms of achievement carried social status.

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Chapter 2: The Polytechnic Years (Age 18-21)

Singapore Polytechnic: Middle-Class Limbo

Wei Ming entered Singapore Polytechnic to study Mechanical Engineering, part of Singapore’s great middle tier of educational institutions. Not elite, not vocational, but respectable – the educational equivalent of Singapore’s carefully managed social stratification.

The polytechnic environment reflected Singapore’s neoliberal tensions perfectly. The curriculum was designed to produce technically competent workers for multinational corporations and government-linked companies. Students were taught to think of themselves as “human resources” to be optimised for economic productivity.

The Internship Economy

During his second year, Wei Ming secured an internship at a German engineering firm in Tuas. The experience was eye-opening in ways the education system hadn’t prepared him for.

His supervisor was a 45-year-old German expatriate named Klaus, who earned more than Wei Ming’s father despite having comparable technical skills. Klaus lived in a condominium in Bukit Timah, sent his children to international schools, and seemed to effortlessly navigate Singapore as a privileged outsider.

“You Singaporeans work very hard,” Klaus told Wei Ming during a lunch conversation. “But you don’t seem to enjoy life very much. In Germany, we have time for family, for community, for things other than work.”

This comment haunted Wei Ming. He had grown up believing that Singapore’s work ethic and educational competitiveness were virtues that set them apart from less successful societies. But Klaus’s casual observation suggested that something essential might be missing from the Singaporean approach to life.

The Foreign Worker Reality Check

At the Tuas industrial estate, Wei Ming encountered Singapore’s migrant worker population for the first time in a meaningful way. The construction sites, factories, and dormitories housed thousands of Bangladeshi, Indian, and Chinese workers who built and maintained the infrastructure that contributed to Singapore’s success.

These men worked longer hours than Wei Ming, often in dangerous conditions, for wages that were a fraction of what Singaporeans earned for comparable work. They lived in dormitories that resembled military barracks, separated from their families for years at a time, with limited rights and no path to permanent residence.

One evening, Wei Ming struck up a conversation with Raja, a 35-year-old construction worker from Tamil Nadu. Raja had a degree in civil engineering but couldn’t find work in India that paid enough to support his family. In Singapore, he sent home $800 monthly – more than he could earn as an engineer in Chennai, but barely enough to survive on.

“Your country is very successful,” Raja told Wei Ming. “But success has been built on our backs. We do not complain – it is honest work. But sometimes I think about my son growing up without a father present.”

This conversation forced Wei Ming to confront an uncomfortable truth about Singapore’s economic model: its prosperity depended on a carefully managed system of inequality that extracted value from vulnerable workers while maintaining the fiction of meritocratic fairness.

The Girlfriend Dilemma: Love vs. Pragmatism

During his final year at the polytechnic, Wei Ming began dating Sarah, a classmate studying Business Administration. Sarah was intelligent, ambitious, and came from a similar middle-class background. Their relationship reflected the complex ways neoliberal logic had penetrated even romantic relationships.

Strategic Romance

Their relationship began pragmatically – they were study partners who found they worked well together. Sarah was organised and detail-oriented; Wei Ming was creative and good at problem-solving. They complemented each other academically before they fell in love emotionally.

But even their love was shaped by institutional pressures. Both were expected to have “serious” relationships that would lead to marriage and family formation, but only after establishing career stability. Both were acutely aware that their choice of life partner would significantly impact their social and economic trajectory.

Sarah’s parents approved of Wei Ming because he was pursuing a stable career in engineering. Wei Ming’s parents appreciated that Sarah was studying business and could potentially contribute to the family income. The traditional Chinese emphasis on family compatibility had been replaced by economic calculation.

The University Question

As graduation approached, Sarah decided to pursue a part-time degree while continuing to work. Wei Ming faced the same choice: enter the workforce immediately or continue studying. The decision was both personal and systematic – part of Singapore’s carefully designed system for managing human capital development.

Sarah’s pragmatic approach reflected the neoliberal logic perfectly: “We need to be practical. Cannot just follow passion. Must think about career prospects, salary potential, market demand.”

Wei Ming found himself torn between this practical wisdom and a growing sense that something essential was being lost in the constant calculation of costs and benefits.

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Chapter 3: Early Career (Age 21-28)

The MNC Experience: Global Capital, Local Labour

Wei Ming joined Siemens Singapore as a junior engineer, becoming part of the multinational corporate ecosystem that formed the backbone of Singapore’s economy. The experience introduced him to the sophisticated ways global capital shapes local social relationships.

The Expatriate Premium

His immediate supervisor was Jennifer, a 28-year-old Australian engineer with similar qualifications but significantly higher compensation. Jennifer received housing allowance, international school fees for her children, annual trips home, and other benefits that effectively doubled her total compensation package.

“It’s not personal,” Jennifer explained when Wei Ming inquired about the pay disparity. “It’s just how the market works. We have to offer competitive packages to attract international talent.”

This encounter highlighted how Singapore’s foreign talent policy perpetuates systematic inequality within workplaces. Local professionals competed not just on merit but against the structural advantages provided to expatriate workers.

The Efficiency Imperative

Siemens Singapore was obsessively focused on efficiency metrics: project completion times, cost reduction percentages, and quality improvement indices. Every aspect of work was quantified, measured, and optimised according to global corporate standards.

Wei Ming initially excelled in this environment. His engineering training had prepared him to think systematically about optimisation problems. But over time, he began to notice what the efficiency metrics missed.

When the company implemented cost-cutting measures that reduced the maintenance staff, Wei Ming saw older Singaporean workers—men who had worked for the company for decades—being laid off without meaningful retirement support. Their years of loyalty and accumulated knowledge were dismissed as inefficient overhead.

“Business is business,” his manager explained. “Cannot be sentimental about these decisions.”

Marriage and Housing: The Great Sorting

At 25, Wei Ming and Sarah got married in a ceremony that perfectly captured the tension between tradition and neoliberal pragmatism.

The Wedding as Performance

The wedding dinner cost $35,000—a sum that required both families to take out loans and dip into their retirement savings. But social expectations demanded a celebration that demonstrated the families’ success and the couple’s prospects.

Ah Ma didn’t understand why they needed to spend so much money on one evening when they were simultaneously struggling to save for a down payment on a house. “Last time wedding straightforward – tea ceremony, home-cooked food, family blessing. Also very happy.”

However, the modern Singaporean wedding has evolved into a performance of social status, complete with professional photography, elaborate decorations, and expensive venues. The traditional focus on family blessing and community celebration had been replaced by conspicuous consumption and social display.

The BTO Application: Housing as Lottery

Wei Ming and Sarah applied for a Build-To-Order flat in Punggol, joining the thousands of young couples competing for subsidised public housing. The BTO system exemplified Singapore’s approach to social policy: universal in principle, but stratified in practice.

They were allocated a 4-room flat after an 18-month wait, grateful to receive any allocation at all. But the location in Punggol meant a 90-minute commute to the CBD, isolation from both sets of parents, and separation from the established communities where they had grown up.

The Renovation Trap

The flat came as an empty shell, requiring $80,000 in renovations to make it habitable. This cost, combined with the down payment and legal fees, consumed their savings and required additional loans.

Wei Ming found himself working overtime to service the debt, while Sarah took on freelance projects in addition to her full-time job. The flat they had wanted as a foundation for family life had become a financial burden that consumed the time and energy they needed for relationship building.

Family Planning as Economic Strategy

As their friends began having children, Wei Ming and Sarah faced intense social pressure to start their own family. But the financial realities were daunting: childcare costs, education expenses, and the loss of Sarah’s income during maternity leave.

“Must plan properly,” Sarah’s mother advised. Children are costly nowadays. Must make sure you can afford it before having a baby.”

The traditional Chinese approach, where children were blessings that brought joy despite economic hardship, where extended families shared child-rearing responsibilities, and where communities supported young parents, had been replaced by individual financial planning and cost-benefit analysis.

The Promotion: Success and Its Discontents

At 27, Wei Ming was promoted to Senior Engineer with a 30% salary increase. By conventional measures, he was succeeding in Singapore’s meritocratic system. But success brought its own form of alienation.

The Management Track

His new role involved less hands-on engineering and more project management, budget oversight, and team coordination. Wei Ming discovered he was good at these responsibilities but found them less fulfilling than the technical problem-solving that had initially attracted him to engineering.

More concerning was the realisation that advancement meant becoming complicit in the system’s inequalities. He now had to make decisions about contractor payments that he knew squeezed migrant workers’ wages. He had to implement efficiency measures that eliminated jobs held by older Singaporean workers.

The Expatriate Ceiling

Despite his promotion, Wei Ming realised that the senior leadership positions were still predominantly held by expatriates. The message was subtle but clear: local professionals could advance to middle management, but strategic leadership required “international experience” and “global perspectives” – code words for expatriate preferences.

His new boss was Marcus, a 40-year-old American who had been hired to lead the Asia-Pacific operations. Marcus was competent but no more capable than several local candidates who had been passed over. The promotion sent a clear signal about the limits of local advancement.

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Chapter 4: The Family Crisis (Age 28-35)

Ah Ma’s Illness: Traditional Values vs. Modern Systems

When Wei Ming was 30, Ah Ma was diagnosed with dementia. This crisis forced him to confront the fundamental tensions between Singapore’s efficient systems and traditional family obligations.

The Healthcare Maze

Singapore’s healthcare system was world-class in technical terms, but poorly designed for families dealing with chronic care needs. Ah Ma required constant supervision, but the system assumed families would provide care privately while continuing to work full-time jobs.

Wei Ming’s parents were both still working; retirement was financially impossible, given their housing loans and limited CPF savings. Sarah was pregnant with their first child and working full-time. The traditional extended family support system had been fractured by geographic dispersal and economic pressures.

“Must put Ah Ma in nursing home,” Sarah’s mother advised. “Cannot take care at home – too difficult, too expensive.”

But Wei Ming remembered Ah Ma caring for her own mother-in-law until the elderly woman’s death, never considering institutional care as an option. The idea of placing Ah Ma in a facility felt like a betrayal of everything she had taught him about family loyalty and respect.

The Language Barrier Crisis

As Ah Ma’s condition worsened, she reverted to speaking only Hokkien – the language of her childhood and deepest memories. But Wei Ming could barely communicate with her in dialect, and Sarah spoke none at all.

The nursing home staff were primarily Filipino and Indonesian women who spoke English and some Mandarin, but no Hokkien. Ah Ma became increasingly agitated and confused, unable to express her needs or understand what others were saying to her.

“This is what happens when we lose our language,” Wei Ming’s father said bitterly. “Our own grandmother becomes a stranger to us.”

The Care Economy’s Hidden Costs

The family hired a domestic helper, Maria, to care for Ah Ma at home. Maria was a 45-year-old Filipino woman who had left her own children to care for the elderly relatives of others in Singapore.

Maria was kind and competent, but the arrangement highlighted the global inequalities embedded in Singapore’s care economy. While Singaporean families struggled to balance work and care responsibilities, women from poorer countries were imported to fill the gap, often at the cost of their own family relationships.

Wei Ming found himself paying Maria $600 monthly to provide care that traditional Chinese families would have shared among extended family members. The monetisation of care felt wrong, but no alternatives existed within Singapore’s individualised system.

The First Child: Joy and Systematic Pressure

Sarah gave birth to their daughter, Li Wen, when Wei Ming was 31 years old. Parenthood brought immense joy, but also exposed them fully to Singapore’s child-rearing industrial complex.

The Optimisation of Childhood

Before Li Wen was six months old, Sarah was researching infant development programs, early childhood enrichment classes, and preschool options. The message from other parents was clear: every moment of childhood had to be optimised for future academic advantage.

“Must start early,” other mothers told Sarah. “By Primary 1 already too late if never prepared properly.”

Weekends became a series of shuttles between swimming lessons, music classes, language programs, and cognitive development sessions. Li Wen’s childhood was scheduled with the precision of a corporate project plan.

The Preschool Competition

When Li Wen turned two, Wei Ming and Sarah faced the brutal competition for preschool placement. Elite preschools had waiting lists longer than those for university admission. Parents camped overnight to secure registration slots.

The annual preschool fees, at $1,200 per month for quality programs, exceeded the median wages of many countries. But the alternative was to disadvantage Li Wen in the academic competition that would determine her entire life trajectory.

“Crazy system,” Wei Ming’s father observed. “Last time, children just played, learn from family and neighbours. Also, grow up successful, happy.”

But “last time” belonged to an economic system that no longer existed. In modern Singapore, childhood play has been replaced by structured learning, family teaching by professional instruction, and neighbourhood communities by competitive individualism.

The Domestic Helper Dilemma

With both parents working full-time and Li Wen requiring constant care, the family hired Ruby, a 35-year-old Indonesian domestic helper. Ruby was loving and reliable, but her presence created complex emotional dynamics.

Li Wen spent more waking hours with Ruby than with her parents. She learned Indonesian songs, ate Indonesian snacks, and developed emotional attachments that transcended the employment relationship.

But Ruby was legally prohibited from permanent residence in Singapore. Her work permit was tied to the family’s sponsorship and could be terminated at any time. The system required emotional bonds to form, but prevented them from developing into lasting relationships.

When Ruby’s mother fell ill in Java and she needed to return home permanently, Li Wen was heartbroken. The three-year-old couldn’t understand why someone she loved as family could simply disappear from her life.

Career vs. Family: The Impossible Choice

As Li Wen grew older, Wei Ming faced increasing pressure to advance his career while also being present for his daughter’s development.

The Expatriate Track

Siemens offered Wei Ming a three-year assignment in Munich—a significant career opportunity that would provide international experience and position him for senior leadership roles. The package included housing allowance, international school fees, and other benefits that would dramatically improve the family’s financial situation.

However, accepting the assignment meant severing Li Wen’s ties to her extended family, disrupting her Mandarin language development, and enrolling her in an international school system that would further distance her from her local culture.

Sarah was torn. “Good opportunity for your career,” she said. “But what about Ah Ma? What about our families? What about Li Wen’s roots?”

The Promotion Pressure

Wei Ming’s local career advancement required increasingly long hours, frequent business travel, and weekend commitments. Success in Singapore’s corporate environment demanded total devotion to work, leaving little time for family relationships.

He found himself missing Li Wen’s bedtime stories, school events, and weekend family activities. The traditional Chinese ideal of the devoted father who taught children moral values and cultural knowledge was increasingly difficult to maintain amid the demands of modern career advancement.

“Daddy always working,” Li Wen began saying, a comment that cut deeper than any performance review criticism.

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Chapter 5: The Awakening (Age 35-40)

The Scholarship Kid’s Return

When Wei Ming was 36, his neighbourhood friend from primary school, Raj, returned to Singapore after completing a PhD at MIT and working for Google in Silicon Valley. Raj had been a President’s Scholar – one of the chosen few who received full government sponsorship for overseas education in exchange for civil service bonds.

The Elite Track Revealed

Raj returned as a Director in the Smart Nation initiative, earning more than twice Wei Ming’s salary despite being only two years older. More significantly, Raj moved seamlessly between government service, corporate advisory roles, and academic appointments—the kind of career flexibility available only to Singapore’s credentialed elite.

“The system worked exactly as designed,” Raj explained over coffee at their old neighbourhood kopitiam. Scholarship to an elite university, government fast-track, international experience, and then senior leadership. All very predictable.”

But Raj seemed oddly disconnected from the success he had achieved. He lived in a private condominium in District 10, sent his children to international schools, and socialised primarily with other scholarship holders and expatriates.

“Sometimes I feel like a tourist in my own country,” Raj admitted. “I can analyse Singapore’s development strategies, but I don’t really understand how ordinary Singaporeans live anymore.”

The Price of Elite Success

Raj’s success had come at the cost of authentic community connections. His government scholarship had required him to study overseas during his early twenties—the years when most people form lasting friendships and romantic relationships. His career advancement required geographic mobility, which prevented him from forming deep local roots.

His marriage to another scholarship holder had been pragmatic rather than passionate – two high achievers combining resources and credentials. Their children attended the same international schools as expatriate children, spoke English as their primary language, and seemed destined to repeat the pattern of rootless elite circulation.

“My kids don’t know any of their grandparents’ stories,” Raj said. “They can discuss global politics but can’t name the trees in our neighbourhood parks.”

The Hawker Centre Conversation

One evening, Wei Ming took Li Wen, now six years old, to the Geylang Serai hawker centre where Ah Ma used to bring him as a child. The visit triggered a profound realisation about cultural loss and institutional power.

The Vanishing Culture

Many of the stalls that Wei Ming remembered from childhood had closed, replaced by more commercially viable but culturally generic options. The uncle who used to make traditional Hokkien mee had retired; his son worked in IT and had no interest in continuing the hawker tradition.

Li Wen, despite being ethnically Chinese, was unable to identify most of the traditional foods. She preferred the chicken rice and laksa – dishes that had been standardised for tourist consumption – over the more complex flavours that required cultural knowledge to appreciate.

“Why do people eat this?” she asked about the tau huay (soybean curd) that Ah Ma had loved. “It doesn’t taste like anything.”

Wei Ming realised that Li Wen’s palate, like her language abilities and cultural knowledge, had been shaped by Singapore’s internationalised, commercialised environment rather than by traditional family transmission.

The Elderly Uncle’s Warning

An elderly Hokkien uncle at the following table overheard their conversation and spoke to Wei Ming in dialect: “Young man, your daughter is beautiful, very smart-looking. But she doesn’t know who she is, does she?”

The uncle’s observation was gentle but devastating. Li Wen was being raised to succeed in Singapore’s global economy. Still, she was losing connection to the cultural traditions that had sustained her ancestors through centuries of hardship and change.

“This government is very clever,” the uncle continued in Hokkien. “Make us rich, make us modern. But it makes us forget who we are. Your Ah Ma is very sad, I think.”

The Corporate Revelation

At 38, Wei Ming was promoted to Engineering Manager at Siemens, a role that required him to implement cost-cutting measures across the Southeast Asian operations. The experience exposed him to the systematic ways that corporate efficiency extracted value from human relationships.

The Vendor Squeeze

One of Wei Ming’s responsibilities was renegotiating contracts with local suppliers – small Singaporean companies that provided specialised components and services. The directive from corporate headquarters was clear: reduce costs by 15% across all vendor relationships.

Many of these suppliers were family businesses that had worked with Siemens for decades. They employed older Singaporean workers, maintained traditional apprenticeship relationships, and contributed to the local economy in ways that corporate accounting couldn’t measure.

The cost reductions forced these companies to lay off experienced workers, reduce quality standards, or close entirely. The social knowledge embedded in these businesses – including craft skills, mentorship relationships, and community employment – was treated as economically irrelevant.

The Efficiency Trap

Wei Ming discovered that corporate efficiency metrics systematically favoured solutions that externalised social costs. Replacing experienced local workers with younger foreign staff initially appeared to be a productivity improvement on spreadsheets, but it ultimately destroyed accumulated knowledge and community relationships.

Shifting production to lower-cost countries appeared profitable in quarterly reports. Still, it eliminated the industrial ecosystem that had supported Singapore’s development and provided meaningful work for generations of local families.

“We’re optimising ourselves out of existence,” Wei Ming told Sarah one evening. “Everything that made Singapore work as a society is being sacrificed for short-term efficiency gains.”

The Education System Confrontation

As Li Wen approached Primary 1, Wei Ming and Sarah faced the full force of Singapore’s educational competition system. The experience crystallised their understanding of how institutional design shapes family relationships.

The Primary School Balloting

Despite living within the official catchment area, Li Wen was not guaranteed admission to the neighbourhood primary school. The balloting system prioritised children whose parents had volunteered at the school, made substantial donations, or had alumni connections.

Sarah spent months volunteering at the school’s administrative office, sacrificing weekends and evenings to increase Li Wen’s chances of admission. The unpaid labour was presented as “community service,” but it was actually a thinly disguised selection mechanism that favoured families with flexible schedules and social capital.

“This is not about children’s education,” Wei Ming’s father observed. “This is about testing parents – who can sacrifice more time, more money, more energy for competition.”

The Tuition Industrial Complex

Even before Li Wen started Primary 1, other parents were recommending tutoring centres, enrichment programs, and academic coaches. The message was clear: school instruction alone was insufficient for academic success.

The costs were staggering – quality tuition programs charged $200-400 monthly per subject. For comprehensive academic support, families can easily spend $1,500-$ 2,000 monthly on their child’s education, in addition to school fees and other expenses.

More troubling was the impact on family life. Children as young as seven had schedules that resembled those of corporate executives – school from 7:30 am to 1:30 pm, lunch, tuition from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm, homework until 8:00 pm, and then preparation for the next day.

“When do children play?” Ah, Ma asked during one of her lucid moments. “When do they learn from grandparents? When do they just become children?”

The Moral Compromise

Despite their philosophical objections to the system, Wei Ming and Sarah enrolled Li Wen in tuition classes. The alternative – disadvantaging their daughter in the academic competition – felt like parental negligence.

“We have no choice,” Sarah rationalised. “Cannot let Li Wen suffer because we want to be different.”

But Wei Ming recognised this as the exact logic that perpetuated the system. Every parent who reluctantly participated strengthened the competitive dynamics that trapped all families in escalating educational arms races.

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Chapter 6: The Reckoning (Age 40-45)

Ah Ma’s Death: The Cultural Inheritance Lost

When Wei Ming was 42, Ah Ma passed away peacefully in her sleep. Her death marked not just the loss of a beloved family member but the end of a cultural lineage that connected the family to pre-neoliberal Singapore.

The Funeral Rituals

Organising Ah Ma’s funeral exposed the extent to which traditional practices had been commercialised and standardised. The funeral director efficiently managed all arrangements, from religious ceremonies to catering, transforming grief into a series of consumer choices.

Li Wen, now eight years old, participated in the funeral rituals without understanding their cultural significance. She couldn’t read the Chinese characters on the incense offerings, didn’t know the stories behind the traditional prayers, and spoke to relatives in English rather than dialect.

The Inheritance That Couldn’t Be Passed Down

Ah Ma had left behind photo albums, handwritten recipes, traditional clothes, and jewellery – physical artefacts of a life lived within traditional Chinese cultural frameworks. But the knowledge needed to understand and use these objects had not been transmitted to younger generations.

Wei Ming found himself unable to explain to Li Wen why certain foods were prepared for ancestor worship, what the symbols on traditional clothes represented, or how the family’s migration story connected to broader historical patterns.

“She was our living connection to who we were before Singapore became this,” Wei Ming told Sarah as they sorted through Ah Ma’s belongings. “Now that connection is broken.”

The Expat Realisation

At 43, Wei Ming finally accepted the Munich assignment with Siemens, motivated partly by career advancement but mainly by a desire to understand how other societies strike a balance between economic success and social cohesion.

Germany: A Different Model

Living in Munich exposed the family to a society that had consciously chosen to preserve specific traditional values despite economic modernisation. German colleagues worked efficiently during business hours but prioritised family time in the evenings and on weekends. Children played in neighbourhood parks without structured supervision. Extended families gathered regularly for meals and celebrations.

“Germans also very successful economy,” Wei Ming observed to Sarah. “But they didn’t sacrifice family life for efficiency the way we did.”

Li Wen thrived in the international school environment, but Wei Ming noticed she was becoming even more disconnected from Asian culture. She preferred hamburgers to rice, spoke German more enthusiastically than Mandarin, and seemed comfortable in European social settings in ways that highlighted her growing distance from Singaporean identity.

The Expatriate Bubble

As a Singaporean expatriate, Wei Ming experienced the same privileges he had observed among foreign professionals in Singapore: housing allowances, international school fees, tax advantages, and social status as an “international expert.”

But the experience also revealed the social costs of expatriate life. The family lived comfortably but rootlessly, connected to Singapore through video calls and annual visits rather than daily community participation.

Li Wen made friends easily but formed no deep attachments, knowing that expatriate families moved frequently. The constant adaptation required emotional flexibility but prevented the deep belonging that comes from long-term community membership.

The Return Decision

After two years in Munich, Wei Ming faced a choice: accept a permanent European assignment with significant career and financial advantages, or return to Singapore to rebuild local connections and cultural roots.

The decision crystallised his understanding of neoliberalism’s fundamental trade-off: individual advancement versus community belonging, global opportunities versus local rootedness, economic optimisation versus cultural continuity.

Coming Home: The Reverse Culture Shock

Returning to Singapore after three years abroad, Wei Ming experienced reverse culture shock that illuminated how profoundly the society had changed during his absence.

The Hyper-Development

Singapore had become even more efficient, more globalised, and more technologically sophisticated. The Smart Nation initiatives had digitised most government services, shopping malls featured the latest international brands, and the startup ecosystem attracted entrepreneurs from around the world.

But the social changes were more striking than the technological ones. Neighbourhoods that had maintained some traditional character when Wei Ming left had been redeveloped into standardised residential complexes. Hawker centres had been upgraded with modern facilities but had lost much of their cultural authenticity.

Li Wen’s Reintegration Challenge

Li Wen, now 11, struggled to readjust to Singapore’s educational system. Her international school experience had emphasised creativity and critical thinking, but local schools prioritised examination preparation and standardised achievement.

More concerning was her cultural disconnection. She felt like a foreigner in her own country, more comfortable with expatriate children than with local peers, and more fluent in German than in Mandarin or the local dialects.

“I don’t really feel Singaporean,” she confided to Wei Ming. “But I’m not German either. What am I?”

Her question reflected the identity confusion experienced by many third-culture children, but it also revealed the broader cultural fragmentation created by Singapore’s globalised education and career systems.

The Corporate Disillusionment

Chapter 1: The Return

The Singapore skyline glittered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the forty-second floor, each light a testament to the city-state’s relentless march toward technological supremacy. Wei Ming adjusted his tie—Italian silk, a gift from his predecessor—and surveyed the kingdom he now ruled. Regional Director for Southeast Asia, Siemens Digital Industries. At thirty-eight, he had climbed higher than his father, a factory foreman, had ever dared dream.

Yet as he stood in his corner office, surrounded by the trappings of success, Wei Ming felt nothing but a hollow ache in his chest.

“Sir?” His assistant’s voice crackled through the intercom. “The board is ready for your presentation.”

Wei Ming picked up the tablet containing his quarterly report—a document that would seal the fate of 847 employees across six countries. The numbers were clean, the projections promising, the human cost carefully abstracted into euphemisms like “workforce optimisation” and “operational efficiency gains.”

Chapter 2: The Optimisation Imperative

His new role required implementing AI and automation systems that eliminated hundreds of manufacturing jobs across the region. The boardroom fell silent as Wei Ming clicked through slides showing productivity increases of forty per cent, cost reductions of thirty-five per cent, and profit margins that would make shareholders ecstatic.

“Outstanding work, Wei Ming,” said Klaus Hoffman, the CEO, via video link from Munich. “This is exactly the kind of forward-thinking leadership we need in Asia-Pacific.”

Wei Ming nodded, accepting congratulations from executives who saw only numbers on spreadsheets. They didn’t see Lim Ah Seng, a 52-year-old technician at the Johor facility, who had worked for Siemens for 23 years. They were unaware of his daughter’s university fees or his mother’s medical bills. In the algorithm’s cold calculation, Ah Seng was simply a redundant variable to be eliminated.

After the meeting, Wei Ming returned to his office and stared at the implementation timeline. Phase One would begin in two weeks—the Johor plant first, then facilities in Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Each location represented not just operational improvements, but shattered lives, broken promises, and communities left behind by the relentless march of progress.

Chapter 3: Ghosts of the Assembly Line

That evening, Wei Ming found himself driving to his childhood neighbourhood in Toa Payoh, something he hadn’t done in years. The HDB flats looked smaller than he remembered, their faded concrete facades a stark contrast to the gleaming condominiums sprouting throughout the city.

He parked outside Block 127, where his family had lived when his father worked the assembly line at a now-defunct electronics factory. The old man had been proud of his work, coming home each evening with calloused hands and stories of the television sets and radios he’d helped build.

“We’re building Singapore’s future,” his father used to say, showing young Wei Ming circuit boards and explaining how each component mattered.

The factory had closed in 1998, automated out of existence by machines that could work faster, cheaper, and without sick leave. His father had spent his final working years as a security guard, the dignity slowly leaching from his eyes with each passing year.

Wei Ming’s phone buzzed. A message from his deputy: “Johor plant supervisor requesting a meeting. Worried about staff morale ahead of announcement.”

He deleted the message without responding.

Chapter 4: The Human Algorithm

The next morning brought a video call with Maria Santos, the plant manager in Batam. She had worked her way up from the factory floor, her English still tinged with the accent of her Indonesian village.

“Mr. Wei, I need to speak with you about the automation project,” she said, her face pixelated on the conference room screen. “These people, they have families. They trust Siemens. Some have worked here fifteen, twenty years.”

Wei Ming had rehearsed this conversation. “Maria, I understand your concerns. But we have to remain competitive. The market won’t wait for sentiment.”

“This isn’t sentiment, sir. This is loyalty. These workers have given their lives to this company.”

“And the company has given them employment, training, and opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise. But business is business, Maria. We have shareholders to consider.”

Even as he spoke the words, Wei Ming tasted their bitterness. When had he become someone who could reduce human beings to line items in a budget spreadsheet?

Maria’s face hardened. “With respect, sir, you sound like every other executive who’s never set foot on a factory floor.”

The accusation stung because it was true. Wei Ming had transcended his origins so completely that he’d forgotten them entirely. He had become the system that had once displaced his own father.

Chapter 5: The Weight of Progress

Sleep eluded Wei Ming that night. He stood on his penthouse balcony, thirty floors above the Singapore River, watching cargo ships navigate toward the port. Each vessel carried goods manufactured by the kind of workers he was about to make obsolete.

His phone displayed an email from Human Resources: “Severance packages finalised. Legal has approved all documentation. Ready to proceed with Phase One announcements.”

Attached were the personnel files of the affected employees. Wei Ming scrolled through them, each profile a story reduced to employment dates and final salary figures. Raj Patel, 19 years of service, three children. Chen Wei Ling, 23 years, caring for elderly parents. Muhammad Hassan, 16 years old, youngest child starting secondary school.

These weren’t inefficiencies to be optimised. They were people whose livelihoods he was about to destroy in the name of progress and profit margins.

Chapter 6: The Announcement

The Johor plant’s cafeteria had never held such a sombre gathering. Wei Ming stood at the front, facing 200 employees who had been told only that management had an important announcement. The air conditioning hummed overhead, competing with the nervous whispers of workers who already sensed bad news.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Wei Ming began, his voice echoing off the institutional walls. “Siemens is undergoing a digital transformation that will position us for future growth and competitiveness.”

The corporate language felt like ash in his mouth. He continued reading from his prepared statement, watching faces in the crowd shift from confusion to understanding to despair. A woman in the third row began crying silently. An older man slowly shook his head, his shoulders sagging with the weight of inevitability.

“Affected employees will receive comprehensive severance packages and outplacement services,” Wei Ming concluded, the words ringing hollow in the sudden silence.

Then came the questions—angry, desperate, bewildered. How could they support their families? What about their years of loyal service? Didn’t Siemens care about the community that had supported them?

Wei Ming provided the answers he’d been trained to give, each response a minor betrayal of his own humanity.

Chapter 7: Counting the Cost

Over the following weeks, Wei Ming watched the human cost of optimisation unfold in real time. Employee assistance hotlines reported a surge in calls. Local newspapers ran stories about factory workers struggling to find new employment. Social media is filled with bitter testimonials from former Siemens employees.

The automated systems, meanwhile, performed flawlessly. Production efficiency soared. Quality metrics improved. The robots never called in sick, never complained about working conditions, never asked for raises or time off for family emergencies.

Klaus Hoffman called personally to congratulate Wei Ming on the successful implementation. “The Munich board is extremely impressed,” he said. “We’re considering you for the global automation initiative. It would mean relocating to Germany, of course, but the opportunities are limitless.”

Limitless opportunities built on limitless human displacement.

Chapter 8: The Breaking Point

The breaking point came on a Thursday afternoon when Maria Santos called from Batam. Her voice was strained, barely controlled.

“Sir, we have a situation. One of the terminated employees, Bambang Sutrisno, took his own life last night. Left a note saying he couldn’t face his family after losing his job.”

Wei Ming felt the room spin around him. Bambang Sutrisno—Employee ID 4847, 18 years of service, married with two teenage daughters. In the algorithm’s calculation, he had been redundant. In reality, he had been someone’s father, someone’s husband, someone’s world.

“His daughter called me,” Maria continued. “She wanted to know why we threw her father away like garbage after he gave us his whole adult life.”

The line went quiet except for the sound of Maria crying 8,000 kilometres away.

Chapter 9: The Reckoning

That night, Wei Ming sat in his darkened office, staring at the files for the automation project scattered across his desk. Each document represented another phase of human elimination, another step toward perfect efficiency.

He thought about his father, who had died five years earlier, still believing that honest work meant something, that loyalty was reciprocated, that companies were more than profit-extraction machines. The old man had never known that his son would become the architect of everything he’d fought against.

Wei Ming’s reflection was interrupted by his phone. A text from his ex-wife: “Saw the news about Siemens layoffs. Hope you can still sleep at night.”

He realised he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept soundly. Success had insulated him from consequence, but not from conscience.

Chapter 10: The Choice

The next morning brought an email that would define the rest of Wei Ming’s career. Klaus Hoffman was offering him the global position of Chief Technology Officer for Worldwide Automation, based in Munich, with a salary that would place him among Singapore’s highest-paid executives.

All he had to do was continue doing what he’d been doing: turning human workers into spreadsheet entries, communities into market opportunities, and lives into variables to be optimised.

Wei Ming stared at the offer letter for a long time. Then he opened his laptop and began typing his resignation.

Epilogue: After the Fall

Six months later, Wei Ming stood outside a community centre in Johor Bahru, adjusting the collar of his simple cotton shirt. The building was modest, nothing like the gleaming corporate towers he’d once inhabited, but it buzzed with a different kind of energy.

Inside, former Siemens employees were learning new skills, including web design, digital marketing, and small business management. Some were starting their own companies. Others were retraining for jobs in green energy or elder care. The transition wasn’t easy, and not everyone would make it, but they were trying their best.

Maria Santos had joined him in this venture, using her severance package to help fund the retraining centre. “It’s not much,” she said, watching a group of former assembly workers practice coding, “but it’s honest work.”

Wei Ming smiled, remembering his father’s words. For the first time in years, he slept soundly at night.

The automation at Siemens continued without him, generating record profits and industry accolades. His replacement received the Munich promotion and was featured on the cover of Asian Business Weekly as “The Future of Manufacturing Leadership.”

But in a small community centre in Malaysia, human dignity was being quietly restored, one person at a time. And Wei Ming had finally found work that his father would have been proud of.

The corporate machine rolled on, optimising and eliminating, but some ghosts, he had learned, were worth becoming.

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