There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Ways to beat the traffic and complete arrogance

When a job’s worth doing, it’s not worth doing well. That’s the approach the Jakarta local council is taking in constructing a network of dedicated “bus lanes” in the capital.

First off, they can’t even be bothered to widen the roads. Nah - that would be far too much effort. Yet, at the same time, they have gone to the trouble of elevating the latest bus lane that runs along Jalan Gatot Subroto. But why? Doing this doesn’t serve any purpose whatsoever. And to run heavy buses on six inch thick concrete is sheer stupidity of course – it won’t be long before that concrete starts to crumble (especially after a few months of heavy rain).

So what is the council achieving apart from dramatically pushing up the costs? Ah – but there you have it. Dramatically pushing up the costs. That is the purpose according to someone I know whose brother is a contractor. And after the Rp1.5 billion bus way shelters, he reckons the elevated concrete bus way is gonna be another nice little earner…

But there are ways to beat the traffic of course. You just need a few motorcycle outriders, a shiny new Volvo and the right connections. That’s all.

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