In recent news, the US Department of Justice charged 78 people $2.5 billion in health-care fraud. According to one of the news articles detailing the charges, the defendants allegedly defrauded programs intended to provide care for elderly and disabled people; in some cases, using the ill-gotten money to purchase exotic cars, jewelry and even yachts.
You can say a lot about the defendants, but they sure know how to live the life. But this news has got me thinking. You cannot build a system for which the success depends on the goodness of the people in-charge. For any system that involves money and people, greed will always rear its ugly head.
You may think of me as being overly pessimistic and down on people, but I am not. I have met and known people with integrity who value honor over money. However, I have also come to know that such people avoid situations where greed and corruption lingers about. The truth of the matter is that most people are in it for themselves.
I am a student of economics. And although the career path that I am on now has deviated from my academic background, the lessons I learned from my good professors during my time in university, I still apply to this day.
We live in a world premised on scarcity. Consequently, each one of us, whether as an individual or as a member of a social unit, will be fighting for these limited resources. And yes, we will form group and alliances out of convenience and to put ourselves in a better position to fight. But make no mistake; the pursuit is still driven by self-interest. And it is not all bad. We can all compete, some win and some lose. The desire to be in a better situation than others motivates us to innovate and improve. The problem is when self-interest develops into unrestrained greed. And for any system where money can be made, greed will always rear its ugly head.
This is the same thought I had with the Maharlika Investment Fund. It has the perfect mix of vast amount of money and potential for human greed. I am not saying it is bound to fail. It can, and I am hoping it will, turn out well.
I know countries that have successful sovereign wealth funds. However, looking at those countries, they do not have level of corruption that the Philippines suffer from. I know that there are stipulated safeguards in place, but so do all aspects of the government. And it never stopped graft and corruption, so far as my experience goes.
I once assisted in preparing budget documents for a public works project. As we were about to submit the documents, a person from the good office of Commission on Audit asked us to adjust the figures to facilitate for the “grease” needed to turn the gears on the project. And that was the first and last time I dipped my finger in that sort of work. I am not writing this piece to exemplify corruption in the Philippines. God knows there are already enough examples of corruption in the country. Travel between any two cities and you will see lots of evidence of that. Now that the bill for the wealth fund has basically been railroaded into fruition, the issue is no longer whether it should exist or not. The question now is, “what can we do, moving forward?”
As much as I hope for this endeavor to succeed, I cannot help but be a realist and try to look at how things can go sideways. And I think this is how we, as Filipinos, should approach this. We need to be vigilant and always demand accountability. It shouldn’t matter who you voted for in the last election or who you are planning to support in the next. Perhaps there is still the hopeful idealist inside of me that thinks if the people in charge of the fund are bound to lose exponentially more than what they make by misusing the authority granted to them, it would deter their greed. Whether the sovereign wealth fund succeeds or fails depends on us as much as it depends on the fund managers the government will choose.
