Every once in a while, I actually read my “word of the day” emails, and, in even fewer cases, I really like the word. Today is one such day, so allow me to share. If you were already familiar with this term and its etymology, gloat away.


--Pyrrhic victory (PIR-ik VIK-tuh-ree) noun

A victory won at too great a cost.

"One more such victory and we are lost," exclaimed Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, as he described his costly success in the battle of Asculum in Apulia. With those words he gave us a metaphor to refer to a victory so costly that it's barely better than defeat.--

I think about this sort of thing often when I am in Singapore. I guess after my superficially gushy post yesterday, I want to swing the other way a bit. As I focus a lot of my study here on innovation and creativity, and identifying processes by which to encourage innovation, and what to do to realize commercial/societal successes from innovation, I am fascinated by the dichotomous climate of Singapore. On the one had, it has done an excellent job of creating an attractive environment for business, and compared with neighboring countries/cities, the standard of living here is undeniably high. But I wonder about the cost, and some of the incongruities of the system, and who it is ultimately there to benefit.

One can’t help but be reminded of the glowing treatment of Bernard Kerrick’s success in reducing crime in New York City in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (which some of you should be reading right now I imagine…I know it’s only suggested for LO, but I would highly recommend it). I was always a bit outraged by the praise showered on Kerrick and Giuliani for “turning that city around” both because I think that it needs to be acknowledged that the impressive drop in crime rates coincided with the most meteoric stock market rise in history, but also because I think that while Giuliani and Kerrick’s “broken window” approach to law enforcement (to not allow any criminal artifacts to be tolerated in a city-from broken windows and grafitti, to turnstile jumpers and traffic light squeegee men) was partly responsible to a drop in crime rates, it was largely responsible for a dramatic increase in the polarization of the city along economic and racial lines. Racial profiling, which led to the Amadu Diallo and Abner Louima tragedies, became the norm in law enforcement, and continues today, which I think in the long term will lead to an escalation of crime, and crime motivated more out of hatred and malice than economic necessity, which is far more difficult to combat.

While I’m still learning my way around here, one thing that leads me to believe that similar forces may be at work here is that, while you and I are encouraged (by way of threatening fines) to wear our seatbelts, poor Chinese and Malay day laborers are legally shuttled around highways at speed in the back of uncovered, unprotected pick-up trucks. I suspect there are many more such examples.

A question that I hope we all ask ourselves often, and not just in connection with the places we live: Economic prosperity yes. But at what cost does it become a defeat rather than a victory?