The Seriousness of Betrayal

Kuok’s sugar empire was eaten by the fat vampire’s family abruptly. Imagine, a world renowned international trade business personality, what humiliation he received in return for his single-minded help all this while for his own country & government? And Najib would never think that the consequences of offending the Sugar King will be so serious.

Betrayal is serious enough to change economies of the world. What this article is describing is the betrayal of the Malaysian leaders towards the Overseas Chinese in the person of Robert Kuok.

This Act of betrayal not only clarified Kuok’s position in Malaysia, for Kuok, it caused him to reposition his advantage in the world. As the article suggests, he seems to have gotten the better position than what the Malaysian government ended up with.

But then two things should be understood. One, at the time of the betrayal, Kuok was positioning himself from outside the OODA loop (a time-step following the process of Observation, Orientation, Decision and Action) of Malaysia, while being Malaysian. His position before betrayal was ambiguous in that he was both Chinese and Malaysian.

While I don’t judge the position Kuok was coming from, his position represents a betrayal of the Malaysian OODA loop. In other words, as a Oversea Chinese, Kuok was coming from, and his resources were going towards, a position that was not within the environment of the Malaysian society, therefore a betrayal.

Second, while I have to assume Kuok’s dealings with the people of Malaysia was fair, his position represented a “extra” force inside the Malaysian society. Because of its economy, a society can be called a distribution of energy in which the sum of the forces is zero. So combining the two (the distance of the position Kuok’s coming from, which is China, and the force representing Kuok as the sugar king) in betrayal, energy was created.

Energy is defined as force at a distance and the distance China represents is easily defined in betrayal. The force is in the potential that the “Sugar King” created.

A OODA loop represents a distribution of energy, as the economy of the society distributes itself in time-steps. Kuok, by being what is defined as an Oversea Chinese, was trying to distribute the energy of the Malaysian OODA loop in more than one direction (in step with both the Malaysian and Chinese culture). In physics, this represents a “betrayal” of energy, if judged by no other reason.

The sum of the forces that are inside a society that make up a OODA loop is zero, if that society is stable. With Kuok’s position of a great magnitude and being, at least partly, outside the OODA loop of the Malaysian society, the forces were not zero, and an “extra” force developed in the form of betrayal. Betrayal being a form of energy.

This article reflects the feelings of that betrayal, from the Chinese perspective. This paragraph taken from Overseas Chinese in Wikipedia probably best describes the way it is in Malaysia:

Ethnic politics can be found to motivate both sides of the debate. In Malaysia, Overseas Chinese tend to support equal and meritocratic treatment on the expectation that they would not be discriminated against in the resulting competition for government contracts, university places, etc., whereas many “Bumiputra” (“native sons”) Malays oppose this on the grounds that their group needs such protections in order to retain their patrimony. These are carried out through affirmative actions. The question of to what extent ethnic Malays, Chinese, or others are “native” to Malaysia is a sensitive political one. It is currently a taboo for Chinese politicians to raise the issue of Bumiputra protections in parliament, as this would be deemed ethnic incitement.^[53]

As Wikipedia explains, the Oversea Chinese represents a small minority in the society of the shared economy, but because of the content of the Chinese character of the Oversea Chinese, they represents a large part of the economy in Malaysia.

To give this another perspective to view from, the Oversea Chinese would represent the top 1% of the American economy. The “extra” forces the Oversea Chinese created in the Malaysian society would be similar to the force created if the “1%” in America shipped the manufacturing jobs Overseas to China, and created a consumer economy to replace the manufacturing economy destroyed (construction/destruction).

It could be that in time-steps, betrayal goes in both directions, but may only be Observed by looking backwards. If that is true and we only see betrayal in one direction, it might be important for those who feel betrayed to look in both directions, as you might see yourself as well as the other guy.

Much easier said than done.

via China and Malaysia: Sugar and frozen durian « China Daily Mail.

Social Business: More Than Just A Definition Or Buzzword

I don’t like to argue definitions and I certainly don’t like to spit out buzzwords just to sound cool (well, sometimes I do). It’s a waste of time, especially when you only have 140 characters to make a point. So if it’s social business, social enterprise, social organization, social this or that, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is what comes out of a business when organizations (employees at all levels) begin to change they way the communicate, lead, behave and work. When I think about various projects that I have worked on both on the agency side, as well as when I worked for the enterprise, I realize that social business enables better business practices.

via Social Business: More Than Just A Definition Or Buzzword.

OK, it’s more that just a definition, but it would have helped if the author had defined Social Business. I am kind of an idiot, so getting into a conversation late, is a little confusing for me. Later he does define Social Business:

Michael Brito is a Senior Vice President of Social Business Planning at Edelman Digital. He helps his clients transform their organizations to be more open, collaborative and socially proficient; with the end result of creating shared value with employees, partners and customers. 

Social Business is business’s sharing the value (if not profit) with its employees, partners and customers. Now that is something I haven’t thought about before, and I am glad to join in the conversation.

A brand has a value, and social business is the sharing of that value through collaboration, good enough!

While profit-sharing was a way of controlling the employees, by enabling self-control, Social Business pulls people into the business by sharing the force of command of the enterprise.

The outcome, like profit-sharing’s self-control, will be self-command.

As the command and control, of an operation, builds the structure of the business model, Social Business works inside the vertical component of that model, instead of profit-sharing’s horizontal position.

As a consumer economy is mostly vertical, Social Business has the potential (or is the potential) of transforming the economy of the U.S.A., through its use of force instead of the velocity used in the horizontal control of the work force.

As with most things in the virtual world, business is several years behind what is happening in the present. By the time Social Business reaches…well business, work-a-rounds will be in place, so, like profit sharing, it will be mostly lip-service to an uniformed public, and the command, like the control, will mostly go to those at the top of the organization.

Where, I might add, command has always  been.