ESSAYS
Not academic exercises. Attempts to think seriously about social issues, policy, and ethics through questions that do not have easy answers: how ideas and action intersect in the systems that shape people's lives.
Thought Papers
Writing is how I find out what I actually think.
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Long before I encountered philosophy in a classroom, I was drawn to questions that resist simple answers. Questions about right and wrong, real knowledge, and what we owe each other. I still am. Philosophy is where I test the foundations. Before asking how a policy should work, I want to know whether the principle underneath it holds. Questions about moral responsibility and the limits of individual freedom are not abstract to me. They show up in every project on this site, dressed differently each time but always asking the same thing.
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Legislation is where principles become rules, and rules become the reality people have to live with. I have spent a lot of time in debate rounds and MUN committees learning to argue persuasively. What I found is that persuasion and process are not the same thing. Debate prioritises the former. Legislation thought papers force me to engage with the latter: tracing how legal frameworks are built, how competing interests get reconciled, and how an idea that starts as a principle ends up as something people are actually required to follow. That process raises questions advocacy cannot answer on its own: who does this policy actually protect? What happens to the people it overlooks? The casework I do at Meet-The-People Sessions shows me those questions are not theoretical. They arrive every week, in person.
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What first drew me to economics was a deceptively simple idea: that the decisions individuals and societies make under conditions of scarcity can be modelled, predicted, and analysed. That abstract human behaviour could be mapped through graphs and data yet retain real-world relevance struck me as both powerful and, eventually, incomplete. Incomplete, because the models are constrained by the assumptions built into them. Seeing markets allocate resources up close showed me how those allocations shape real lives. Writing economics essays is how I move from observation to interrogation: why do some populations remain entirely outside formal economic systems? What does it actually cost when someone cannot participate? What the model cannot capture is not always a rounding error. Sometimes it is a person.
Philosophy & Legislation: Is Taxation Theft?
Taxation is one of those questions that sounds simple until you actually try to answer it. This essay works through whether income tax constitutes theft: not as a rhetorical provocation, but as a genuine philosophical inquiry into legal rights, moral rights, and the social contract that holds them together. The argument examines taxation through three lenses: the individual, the government, and society as a whole, in the context of a capitalist economy. The deeper question underneath it: when does a system's claim on an individual become legitimate, and who gets to decide?
Written May 2023, Submitted to John Locke Global Essay Competition 2023
Legislation: Amending the Public Order Act in Singapore
Singapore has historically kept tight limits on public protest and assembly, a legacy of its founding philosophy that prioritised stability and social order. But the country is changing. The generations growing up here are more willing to speak publicly about issues that were once considered too sensitive to raise. This bill proposes relaxing permit requirements for peaceful public assemblies, a targeted and practical reform designed to bring the law into step with a society that has already moved. I wrote this because the ability to speak up, whether in a debate hall, a classroom, or a public square, depends on whether the system allows it. Policy is the infrastructure of voice.
Written June 2024, Submitted to Moot Parliament Programme 2024
Economics: Education in an Automated World
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing which skills the economy actually rewards, and education systems are not keeping up. This essay asks what that means in practice: which skills will remain valuable when AI can do most cognitive tasks faster than any human, and how should schools respond? Writing it made one thing clearer: the skills AI struggles most to replicate are the ones most schools do not teach deliberately enough. Communication, critical thinking, and the ability to advocate for yourself. That is precisely the gap Project Flare is trying to close.
Written October 2024, Submitted to Harvard International Economics Essay Contest 2024
Philosophy: Are you responsible for your beliefs?
Whether we can control what we believe has been debated for centuries. This essay approaches it through a specific lens: if belief formation is at least partly within our control, then we should be held responsible for what we believe and, by extension, for the actions those beliefs drive. It supports doxastic voluntarism over involuntarism. The first holds that we have meaningful agency over our beliefs. The second holds that belief formation is largely beyond our conscious control. The distinction matters more than it might seem. The question connects directly to the misinformation research paper published alongside this work. If people bear no responsibility for false beliefs formed online, accountability for the spread of misinformation collapses entirely. The argument here is that the reality is both more complicated and more hopeful than that conclusion suggests.
Written May 2024, Submitted to John Locke Global Essay Competition 2024
Legislation: The Resolution of Frustrated Contracts
A frustrated contract is one where something unexpected makes the agreement impossible to honour. Nobody is at fault. But somebody has to absorb the loss. The question of who, and how much, reveals something important about how legal systems handle uncertainty. This essay examines the Law Reform (Frustrated Contracts) Act 1943, arguing that Section 1 provides a workable framework for equitable loss distribution. I wrote it because law, at its best, is a system for resolving situations nobody planned for. Understanding how it does that, and where it falls short, reveals something the statute itself cannot say: that fairness is not a formula. It is a judgment call.
Written January 2025, Submitted to The Peter Cane Legal Reasoning Prize 2025