Economics is a team sport. What happens when we stop playing?

The economy runs on participation. When the price of participating becomes too high, withdrawal becomes feedback.

My position: Capitalism survives only while enough people believe participation is worth the price. When the bargain becomes intolerable, people can withdraw effort, spending, ambition and consent—and force governments and institutions to earn the mandate again.

What happens if enough of us decide we have had enough?

Not enough money.

Enough of the game.

Imagine millions of people deciding they do not need the next promotion, the larger flat, the second property, the newest car, the premium preschool or the salary required to afford all of it.

They work less.

Borrow less.

Spend less.

Compete less.

At first glance, that sounds healthy.

Maybe it is.

But take the thought experiment far enough and the consequences become uncomfortable.

Companies earn less. Investment slows. Employment contracts. The tax base weakens. Governments have less room to fund healthcare, education, infrastructure and social support.

The machine we complain about is also the machine financing much of the society we expect to have.

That is the contradiction.

We complain that Singapore is expensive. We complain about employers, landlords, property prices, COE premiums, childcare, enrichment classes and the endless pressure to earn more.

But an economy is not something they do to us.

We are the economy.

Each decision makes sense. Together, they form the machine.

A family wants a better home.

A worker wants a higher salary.

A business wants a better margin.

A landlord wants a higher rent.

An investor wants a stronger return.

A parent wants every possible advantage for a child.

A government wants growth, employment and revenue.

None of these desires is absurd in isolation.

Most are rational.

Together, they form the machine.

The worker asks for more because living costs have risen. The company raises prices because labour and rent cost more. The landlord raises rent because financing and property values have risen. The consumer borrows because waiting feels like falling behind. The company cuts jobs because payroll is expensive.

Every participant is responding intelligently to the incentives in front of them.

Collectively, we keep increasing the price of the life we are trying to afford.

Capitalism does not need evil people

Capitalism is often described as a monster imposed on ordinary people by a small group of villains.

That is comforting because it lets the rest of us stand outside the system and point.

But capitalism works because it understands us.

It rewards ambition.

It converts desire into demand.

It turns comparison into consumption.

It gives us a familiar language for progress:

Income. Ownership. Valuation. Status. Growth.

Capitalism does not need everyone to be cruel.

It only needs enough of us to want more.

A better house. A better car. A better title. A better school. A larger portfolio. An earlier retirement.

At some point, “better” quietly becomes “more”.

Ambition becomes appetite.

And a system powered by appetite has no natural finish line.

Capitalism needs dissatisfaction

If everyone suddenly felt content with what they already had, much of the consumer economy would have a serious problem.

We do not always replace a functioning phone because it stopped working. We replace it because the new one promises a slightly better version of ourselves.

We do not stretch for a condominium only because an HDB flat is unliveable. We may also be buying status, privacy, facilities, investment upside or proof that we have progressed.

We do not enrol a child in every enrichment programme because each one is necessary. Sometimes we are buying protection from the fear that everybody else’s child is moving ahead.

Desire is not inherently bad. It has built cities, cured diseases and improved living standards.

But capitalism is exceptionally good at converting dissatisfaction into transactions.

It does not ask whether we have enough.

It asks:

What next?

The quiet refusal

China’s 躺平—tang ping, or “lying flat”—is usually presented as a refusal to hustle.

Work less.

Consume less.

Reject promotions.

Delay marriage.

Avoid children.

Stop competing for the life society tells you to want.

From one angle, it looks defeatist.

From another, it is rational.

If working harder no longer produces a proportionately better life, why keep working harder?

If the price of the game keeps rising while the rewards become less certain, withdrawing effort becomes a form of bargaining.

The message is not:

I want nothing.

It is:

I no longer accept your definition of enough—or the terms on which you expect me to pursue it.

That is why withdrawal should not be dismissed merely as laziness.

It is feedback.

It says the expected return on participation has fallen too low.

Withdrawal is not free

There is an appealing fantasy that if enough people stop playing, the system will simply become kinder.

Employers panic. Landlords lower rents. Asset prices fall. Everybody gets more time.

Some of that may happen.

But mass withdrawal has costs too.

Businesses close. Employment falls. Public revenue weakens. Governments borrow more, tax more or provide less. The people with the smallest buffers may suffer first.

Someone still has to grow the food, build the homes, drive the buses, nurse the sick, teach the children and maintain the infrastructure.

A society cannot function if everybody opts out.

But a society is already malfunctioning if meaningful participation requires people to sacrifice their physical and mental health indefinitely.

Both statements can be true.

Responsibility is shared. Power is not.

Saying that individuals participate in the system does not mean everyone carries equal responsibility.

A family deciding whether to upgrade its car does not have the same influence as an institution controlling land, capital or market access.

A renter does not bargain from the same position as a large landlord.

An employee facing retrenchment does not have the same optionality as the executive approving it.

Power is unequal.

Therefore responsibility is unequal too.

Governments must design fairer rules. Regulators must preserve competition. Employers should not treat burnout as an unlimited resource. Essential services should not become extraction machines.

But institutional responsibility does not reduce individual agency to zero.

Those of us with genuine choices still shape the market through what we reward, finance, celebrate and normalise.

Our private definition of enough has public consequences.

The mandate is not a blank cheque

Governments and institutions often behave as though participation is automatic.

People will work.

People will consume.

People will borrow.

People will form families.

People will pay taxes.

People will tolerate more pressure because the economy must keep growing.

But the mandate is not permanent.

It is renewed through trust.

People participate because they believe the system will return some combination of security, mobility, dignity and a tolerable life.

When that bargain breaks, people take back the mandate—not necessarily through revolution, but through millions of smaller refusals.

They reject the promotion.

Delay the purchase.

Leave the industry.

Build alternatives.

Organise.

Vote differently.

Refuse to define success using the scorecard handed to them.

One person doing this looks irrelevant.

Enough people doing it changes wages, demand, politics and institutions.

That is not the destruction of society.

It is society reminding its administrators that the economy exists for people—not the other way around.

The privilege objection

The strongest counterargument is obvious:

Choosing to work less, consume less or reject ambition is itself a privilege.

For many people, there is no philosophical choice to lie flat.

They work because rent is due. They take overtime because children need food. They accept the promotion because one income shock could destabilise the family.

Telling them to redefine enough can sound like advice from someone who already has enough.

That criticism is fair.

Personal restraint cannot substitute for fair wages, affordable essentials or competent policy.

But the fact that agency is unevenly distributed does not make agency irrelevant.

The point is not that every person carries equal responsibility.

The point is that nobody with meaningful choice carries zero responsibility.

Where I may be wrong

My conviction is moderate because affordability is shaped by many forces: land, market concentration, interest rates, wages, regulation, global supply chains, culture and household behaviour.

I may be overstating how much individual restraint can influence structural costs.

I may also be underestimating how much economic withdrawal can hurt the very people it is supposed to empower.

But I remain convinced of one thing:

Institutions watch what people tolerate.

The boundaries move until enough people stop moving with them.

My position

I do not think capitalism is evil.

It may simply be exceptionally good at exploiting something already inside us:

Our desire for more.

I also do not think everyone lying flat is a sustainable answer. If nobody works, produces, spends or invests, there is eventually very little economy left to fund the society we want.

The answer is somewhere between greed and apathy.

Ambition with restraint.

Growth with distribution.

Markets with guardrails.

Individual freedom with collective responsibility.

Most importantly, a healthier definition of enough.

Economics is a team sport.

We need enough ambition to keep the game moving—but not so much that playing the game consumes the reason we wanted to win.

Governments can regulate. Companies can behave better. Employers can share gains more fairly.

But none of them can permanently answer the most personal economic question:

How much is enough?

Every time we collectively answer “more”, somebody discovers what we are willing to pay for it.

Then the price of the game rises again.

And when one person finally says, “Enough already. I do not want the upgrade, the leverage, the promotion or the status premium,” everybody else gets irritated because the system depends on all of us continuing to bid.

In Singapore, we have a phrase for that person.

SPOIL MARKET LAH.