Adapting to change

In 1936 the penalty for erring public utility firms was P200 a day. And P200 was a lot of money then. Sec. 21 of Commonwealth Act 146, as amended (Public Service Act, 1936) provides: “Every public service violating or failing to comply with the terms and conditions of any certificate or any orders, decisions, or regulations of the Commission shall be subject to a fine of not exceeding two hundred pesos per day for every day during which such default or violation continues; and the Commission is hereby authorized and empowered to impose such fine after due notice and hearing.”

That law was written and brought into law in 1936, unchanged for 80 years, so firms can well afford to violate it as much as they like today.

In 2012 Congress, after much acrimony, passed a new “sin tax” law because the old one was 15 years out of date. Inflation had moved all cigarettes into the top tier. Now we are, as my recent columns highlighted, about to revise personal taxes because the unchangeable 1997 law had brought everyone into the top tier of paying too much tax by 2017. In fact earlier.

Congress needs to take into account that things change over (an increasingly short) time when drafting a law. But there’s another change even more difficult to adapt to, and to devise laws to accommodate, and that’s technological change! It took a mere 30 years to go from the first dumb mobile phone of Motorola to the incredible computer-in-a smartphone of today.

It used to be that you could go to college and learn a craft that would last a lifetime. No more, as job requirements are changing rapidly. Some skills are even disappearing from need. What you do today may no longer be a job tomorrow.

If technology can change quicker than we can adapt, what do we do? A law on exhaust emission is meaningless for an electric car. A DUI law has no relevance for self-driving cars. Now here’s an interesting little sidelight: Annually, 1.4 million people die in road accidents. Self-driving cars are meant to address this but—and here’s the fascinating thing—a 50-percent reduction won’t be acceptable, nor will 90 percent. People will expect zero from a robot. That’s absurd, and unrealistic. But it’s what will be (emotionally) expected.

But back to technological change. Politicians need to learn to write laws that adapt to the future. It’s a totally new skill, but if society is to be properly protected yet allowed to advance, it’s a skill they must learn. This is a new world order.

My friend Johnson Ongking gave me a fascinating book by Thomas Friedman, “Thank You for Being Late,” which brought to the fore a thought I’ve had for a long time. He emphasizes the IT Revolution in a graphic way. The first Intel chip was in 1971. Today its latest chip offers 3,500 times more performance, is 90,000 times more energy-efficient, and is about 60,000 times lower in cost. Doesn’t mean much, does it?

But if you applied that to a 1971 VW Beetle, today it would be able to travel at 300,000 miles per hour, get 2,000,000,000 miles to the gallon, and cost 4 cents to buy! As I’ve said, this IT Revolution is going viral. It will even exceed the Industrial Revolution. And quicker. Can we adapt? For our leaders it must be: YES. But I suspect that will be the case for too few of them.

You don’t protect the past, you adapt to the future. You don’t ban or limit Uber and Grab to protect taxis, you let taxis die a natural death—like Kodak. They can become Ubers; it’s what the future is.

We don’t have even one city of the future. They were all designed for the past. Even BGC is a sad copy of previous failures—roads too narrow; intersections, not over- and underpasses, as should be; insufficient off-street parking. And—what infuriates me—no parks. While writing this I was in Melbourne, and there are large restful parks everywhere. Roads are lined with trees, not garbage and cement.

Lack of thinking for the future is why we are stuck in traffic for hours. Don’t blame too many cars, blame unimaginative leaders stuck in the past. Roads should have been designed to cope with the future, not handle the present. An efficient underground and aboveground public transportation service has to be put in place. It’s not there because leaders didn’t think—and act—for the future.

Well past time they did, don’t you think?

Read my previous columns: www.wallacebusinessforum.com. E-mail: wallace_likeitis@wbf.ph