In general, whenever people ask me how I am doing, I usually answer, “Eight out of 10”. This measure is a baseline of sorts for me. I am someone who, on a day-to-day basis, is fairly content with life. Disclaimer: For those of you who read this who do know me, and disagree with this measure, I only said my general contentment is “eight out of 10”, not my level of self-awareness. But that’s a different story.
Anyway, a common response I get is, “Okay, what is this missing ‘two’? What would make it a ‘10 out of 10?’” Well, firstly, I don’t know if it’s really possible to be a 10 out of 10 on a daily basis, where a 10 out of 10 feeling is one I define as a moment of pure joy or transcendence. Those do not come around often, for good reason. If everything was a 10 out of 10, pure joy would tend to feel pretty mundane. In any case, my answer usually is, “Well, when Liverpool or the Boston Celtics win their respective championships, or I’m at a concert of a band I really like, that would typically qualify as a 10 out of 10.”
In 2025, I was fortunate to have at least two 10 out of 10 moments. First, Liverpool won the Premier League. Second, Green Day came to Malaysia! And there are some songs which, when sung in unison with crowds of tens of thousands, make you feel in perfect harmony with all living things. I feel that way — sorry, I felt that way — when singing Time of Your Life, Green Day’s encore song, with all the other concertgoers at the National Hockey Stadium in Bukit Jalil that night.
I’d been searching for some time for a way to properly describe that feeling, and failing. Until I read a newly published book by author and journalist Shea Serrano called Expensive Basketball. In it, while discussing how nearly everything in the NBA is quantified in present times, he describes Expensive Basketball as “… no matter how expansive the list of various pinpoint-specific statistical categories gets, some basketball things remain uncountable”. Thus, Expensive Basketball, he says later, is “… an affirmation of feelings … an affirmation of basketball as virtuosity”.
I love that. It reminds me of this quote from Lady Auden’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, which goes, “Let any man make a calculation of his existence, subtracting the hours in which he has been thoroughly happy — really and entirely at his ease, without one arriere pensée to mar his enjoyment — without the most infinitesimal cloud to overshadow the brightness of his horizon … How fondly we recollect these solitary days of pleasure, and hope for their recurrence, and try to plan the circumstances that made them bright; and arrange, and predestinate, and diplomatize with fate for a renewal of the remembered joy. As if any joy could ever be built up out of such and such constituent parts! As if happiness were not essentially accidental — a bright and wandering bird, utterly irregular in its migrations; with us one summer’s day, and forever gone from us on the next!”
In essence, it is a feeling you get when you experience something that cannot be quantified, cannot be properly measured, but you know it is valuable. It is “expensive” but not in the ringgit and sen sense. In his book, Serrano has chapters like, “The Erosive Terror of Tim Duncan”, “A’ja Wilson: Vengeance”, “Iverson” and, my personal favourite, “The Bad Intention of the Isiah Thomas Dribble”. I find myself heavily inspired by this book and so, I thought, in the light of this article being published in the first week of 2026, what “expensive” political economy moments we might want to achieve in the coming year, and even beyond. Naturally, it is not easy to translate notions of “transcendence” to the political economy, but these are examples, I think, that I would like to see that demonstrate a growing maturity in our political economy. That, in and of itself, is pretty “expensive”.
“Expensive” Political Economy Moment #1: When a high-income Malaysian says, in a matter-of-fact manner, that they plan to send their children to public school as a default.
I have always been on this bandwagon — I will only count a country as “developed” once their public education system becomes the default choice for all citizens. I am not against private schools per se; I do think there can be important instances where they serve a good purpose. But if we’re going to be serious about our long-term economic development, the health of our public school system is a top priority. I have two policy suggestions here — first, pass a law that all members of parliament and Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri, and their immediate families (siblings, children and so on) have to send their children to a public primary and secondary school in their constituency and, second, immediately double the wages of public school teachers.
“Expensive” Political Economy Moment #2: When even the most, let’s call it, market-driven-government-is-always-bad-for-business individual recognises that we should evaluate firms by behaviour, not by parentage.
On Reddit, there is a subreddit called “Bolehland”. A recent discussion topic on Bolehland was, “How Malaysian Billionaires are Made”. I really encourage everyone to check that out. The conclusion drawn by the original poster (OP) was, “… most of our billionaires are created from [government] help. They all owe the [government] and the politicians that were in power at the specific time in which their wealth boomed.” Yes, if your wealth was built on the back of state-backed licences, rent-seeking and monopolies, I don’t think that’s good for the market either. We should care about a competitive marketplace, whether a firm is “private” or “state-owned” is secondary. As a policy suggestion, why don’t we figure out how to get these tycoons, who have benefited from all kinds of concessions and rents for decades, to redeploy capital away from old economy sectors to new economy sectors, by leveraging the potential liberalisation of their concessions and rents? After all, these tycoons are the real long-term patient capital in Malaysia.
“Expensive” Political Economy Moment #3: When public policymakers recognise that most micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia would actually rather have paid employment.
A common trope in Malaysia’s policymaking discourse is that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the economy, given that they form 98% of all enterprises. But here is the thing. Of these SMEs, somewhere between 70% and 80% are micro-entrepreneurs, many of whom behave more like workers looking for wage employment than micro-entrepreneurs in their own right. They seek stability; it is just that they can’t find paid employment, and hence are forced to take up micro-entrepreneurship. This is not a uniquely Malaysian problem — 55% of employment in developing countries is self-employment, and self-employed people transition to wage employment at similar rates as unemployed people, earning similar wages. Put another way, given a choice, much of Malaysia’s economic backbone would rather not be the backbone.
Expensive Basketball is precisely the kind of book I loved reading and would have loved to have written myself. Maybe not about basketball but the idea that there are things that cannot be quantified but are immensely valuable in and of themselves with regard to aspects of life — basketball, football, movies and, yes, even the political economy. But I think it is also true of everyday life. And so, to all readers, I do hope you have many “expensive” moments to come in the year ahead.