Category: filipino elite

breaking the law with Uber

Harvard Business Review‘s Uber Can’t Be Fixed–It’s Time for Regulators to Shut It Down is a must read if you want to know why the LTRFB is right to suspend uber, and why it’s a little embarrassing how outraged many uber users are — it’s all about public service daw, and LTRFB is so palpak in public service and public transport, so let uber be.  besides the units and the drivers are so nice and mabango, not like the MRT and LRT stations and bagons that are so sikip and scary, and you have to make pila pa.

never mind that with uber, no one’s accountable in case of accident or other mishap.  never mind the horrible traffic, swollen by more than a hundred thousand uber units plying metromanila, and not enough roads.  and never mind that uber is about breaking the law.  ours is a culture of illegality anyway.  and we can rant and rave all we want about how corrupt government is, but then so are we who celebrate uber’s subversion of the law just  because it’s oh so convenient and comfortable, and oh so sosyal.

what if we were oh so outraged instead, along with the less moneyed classes, by the transportation department’s turtle pace in upgrading our decrepit mass transport systems?  imagine if we were as passionate about this as we are about supporting uber that’s really just another bunch of foreigners capitalizing, and counting, on a complicit elite, what a shame.

Elitism in the time of Duterte

Katrina S.S.

The upside to having a President like Rodrigo Duterte is that we are finally weeding out the elitists among us. And I don’t mean those who think that Duterte is so bastos, is so not a statesman, is so not President-material because not disente. No, this is beyond just some good ol’ Liberal Party campaign elitism. This is its more evil, less apologetic, more insidious twin. Elitists who even imagine themselves to be pro-poor, because they feel for them and wish to empower them, because they speak of the plight of the poor and the inequality in society.

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Ayala Land: Health hazard

Katrina S.S.

One of the things that I appreciate about President Duterte is his consistent stand against oligarchs’ abusive ways (no matter how selective), and his notion of community justice that happens not just in terms of peace and order ala war on drugs (highly arguable strategy notwithstanding), but also in terms of bringing back peace and quiet to our communities. During the campaign, I heard him talk about videoke bans in public places, and I was hopeful that things might change for us who suffer through the incessant construction noise of big urban land developers.

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‘A-class’ con artists dupe condo buyers

Federico Pascual Jr.

IT IS NOT just low to middle income-earners who are robbed of their dream homes by scheming real estate sellers. The well-to-do also fall victim to con artists of high-end reputable developers as this case shows.

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