nothing on you

life is beautiful when you wake up at 9am in the morning blanketed in the sun's rays shining through the tinted glass windows. beautiful is the morning when after washing up you get back into bed to read books as the room slowly warms up again as the cold air escapes from a now opened door. an unrushed breakfast tasted by ready tastebuds, taken on porcelain plates with chocolate milk in a tasteful glass mug makes it all the better. the fact that lazing on the bed is not wasting 2 days of civilian freedom makes the day sweeter. ah, life is so divine. i love my mc and i need to get it extended.

there is no guilt to taking mc, really, because of the enjoyment accrued without associated loss. in school, you miss lessons, and you have to play catch up. no such thing now. you miss activities but you dont have to pay them back or play catch up. whats over is over as the countdown timer continues to tick towards the most important day of the 2 years of being a public good. with my free time, i have been engaging in rewarding activities, catching up on current affairs and reading social theories, things i havent been able to do in camp despite having chunks of free time because these times are interspersed with random chores that piss me off and break my chain of thought. when im doing serious reading, like i did just now on nu and whatever funny bloc in indonesia within which everyone was ahmad or muhd, i just switch off the phone and now as i progress deeper into my mc nobody calls me anymore, except for some storeman who enjoys talking to me, which is fine, really.

im really now making up for the june holidays of 2008 and 2007, times when i had to mug through the holidays because rj like quite a number of others put the common tests the week after the holidays. in jc1 hard work was required because the first 6 mths i didnt study i just played all the way and in jc2 because i focused on clearing ap and h3 in smu. unlike the hols of yore, i didnt get to go out to play, laze in bed till 9 or 10, watch tv all day and read comics. i woke up early to go to school to study. it was fun, especially when my friends joined me, and some days we fooled around more than we studied, but that nagging from within to get serious or flunk the test made sure it didnt feel like a real break. now im sleeping till 9 with a vengeance, watching ellen degeneres with a vengeance, playing bejeweled with a vengeance. LOL. the enjoyment of each unit of sleep, of stupid tv shows and of stupid games has been diminished, as we know, since the demand curve slopes with a negative gradient, but im still fine since the supply function is still below the demand function and i am profiting way too much.

the greatest weakness of conscription is the inability to align the interest of the individual conscript and the interest of the organization. pep talks work, threats work, pride and discipline work, but only that much. and where i come from, it probably almost doesnt work at all. at least half the people play mcs, reporting sick whenever they dont want to go to work. as a society of the book, nothing much can be done to them as long as they follow the rules and stay at home and remain contactable. some people might find this tough but definitely not me, since i love staying at home and i appreciate the chance to connect with my table, my chair, my sofa, my bed, my toys, the parquet floor and to some extent the barking of my neighbors retarded jack russell. i love how i digress.

anyway, the way to align the interest of the individual to the organization is to provide incentives for actions that benefit the organization requiring the labor (loss of leisure) of the individual so that the nett impact on the individual is positive. this incentive is not hard to find in the army and not hard to find where i serve. individuals are rewarded with offs for doing work, even if in other camps this work is expected of his rank and vocation. i guess this variable component is good, because without it most of the work just wont get done; most people will just be wandering the camp grounds like zombies instead of working. because there is a deadline for everything, the hardworking nice guys will get suckered into doing the work of the lazy buggers at no loss to the lazy buggers. this deadweight welfare loss and inequity has been common in all the camps ive been to, whatever the formation. punishment for the lazy buggers is going to have very limited impact, because like what i said earlier, this is an organization of the book and everyone knows how easy it is to get an mc. to prevent this from happening, from having people reward themselves, it seems better to reward them and get the work done instead of having them reward themselves without getting anything done. it must be easier to obtain the incentive by working than by waiting in line in the polyclinic for hours or paying $40 to the gp below the block. in some sense providing the incentive would be good not just for the organization but also for the society at large. we know how A&E are so clogged up with people who would otherwise die or become paralyzed from the common cold or sore throat. with a healthy system of offs it is less likely that this would happen.

wow so inspired.

Let X = output by labor of the individual to benefit of firm
since all output requires input, assuming direct convertibility, the cost of out by labor to the individual, D (disincentive) should be about X.
it is a fair assumption that the firm benefits from squeezing value out of its labor, so the gain of the firm is to the loss of the labor. so what is positive for the firm has a negative mirror for the labor.
for labor to continue working, and incentive, I, to labor is required. in the private sector, pay, possible promotion, variable bonus and having a job all contributes to this, but in the army the only I possible would be time off, since pay is already fixed, no matter whether one contributes or not, promotion has already been largely determined from your appointment (eg i cannot become a 2sg as an nsf since im a cqms) and you cant be fired. so timeoffs would be like the variable bonus to get you to do work on a daily basis. for it to work, this condition, I-D>0.

the trick here is that the cost of creation of I and enjoyment of I is different and exploitable. in this case, the cos of I is close to 0, since offs are usually taken in lull period when otherwise the clowns are just staring into space or using inet in the bc. and eating cookhouse food, in the process wasting taxpayers monies. so it is possible to reach a win-win situation by giving out offs.

if one is a martinet, it is not difficult to see another option- doling out the reverse. instead of rewarding people for good work, punish them for the Lack Of good work. delaying bookout or harrassment or staff parades are all possible options, since confinement and DB are usually restricted to disciplinary problems where people are punished for not conforming instead of not performing. it is easier to catch these people, but this should be fodder for another post. the problem with penalizing people for the lack of good work is that there is no definitive measure of good work and equity problems will arise. in a camp like mine, the conscripts are extracted from a whole milieu of people with different abilities in different areas. on top of it, no two people do exactly the same job even if both might be storemen or both might be cq. it is already difficult to judge true effort and judging the lack of effort is even harder. no matter what screening device the top man uses, there is no way to be close to even half right half the time. according to dixitnskeath, rewards are used therefore to promote active action while punishments are used to restrict active non compliance. wow h3. awesome.

anyway I = timeoffs, best dog of the month, etc etc etc, even the smile on the boss' face, for some tiny cut of the conscript. but as we know, and as is the justification for astronomical salaries of the superscale, tangibles>>>intangibles. i think so too and i wont contradict this.

the problem usually comes in when there is supposed inequity in the rewards system. some degree of inequity is not just accepted but also expected, but where i am this variance can be so huge it becomes unpalatable. for example, some people have to record closely every single off awarded while others take off when theres nothing to do without deducting from the record. some get off for lifting a finger while some only get early release after getting their energy milked out from their tits like marigold cows. with incapable bosses and differing yardsticks, there is no one situation that can make the palate come. but it can be improved, like all else in this organization, by creating a book of rewards and minimizing discretion of the midlevel managers since most of them cant really manage themselves. just look at my own. he cant even get his hair to standards, argues with the ism over this like a kid, cant support his own guys and is always missing most of the time. his sidekick isnt much better, being stupid enough to always take the long and winding way when there is a direct freeway to the point. for the organization to change for the better, it is not just about the books but also about its guardians. and of course the selection of guardians, which from my experience seems quite flawed, because honestly for all my pussiness i dont see how i am less able as an officer than some people who dont know what they are talking about and find using english a challenge.

much has been done, but much more has to be done.