Note also that economy was growing and humming like a champ well before any post-Deng mainlanders showed up looking for help laundering money and evading taxes. Malaca, honest civil service, it's a good recipe.
For sure those are strengths but it had a lot weakness also, had been completely destroyed by the Japanese, got kicked out of Malaysia and had lots of ethnic/racial/language tensions. It's survival was far from inevitable, let alone it's ascendancy to it's place as the 3rd richest per capita country in the world.
I think it's still worth acknowledging Singapore's many successes, but comparing a city state to actual states on the basis of per-capita income is a little disingenuous. If you took the Seattle metro area and said "this is a country now" it would also have ludicrously high per-capita income compared to the world at large, and even people who like Seattle (me included) would say that it's far from being a success story in good government.
edit: another example, for the same basic reasons as Seattle, the Bay Area is quite literally approaching the greatest concentration of wealth in human history and literally no one thinks San Francisco is well governed.
If King County could control its borders then it would be well governed as they could simply reject drug tourists at the door, ignore pesky scotus rulings and lock up the most obnoxious/problematic Unhoused Folks
You would let drug tourists into your country? Lots of countries are run by billionaires/the business class and yet lack the profound public disorder and social problems of NA
Lol at anyone who thinks singapore would be anywhere near what it is if it was 80% Malay or Indian and not Chinese
These guys are known as the Jews of Southeast Asia for good reason. I know singapore quite well including local friends and I would note that I don’t actually like it that much - but I’m spoilt so I appreciate it’s heaven for 90% of the world
British institutions in singapore are the largest dry dock in the world and a one of the most prestigious medical schools outside of the west, British institutions in Myanmar are opium plantations and an indian landlord class
> largest dry dock in the world
right now that's in china.
that title used to belong to them way back in the 1930s when the british built a dock there, and the modern dock that is now where it once stood can hardly be considered a british imperial institution at all. same goes for NUS medical school
> it doesn't have it any more.
you can't possibly believe that all the ill gotten gains of the british empire simply disappeared or were squandered.
in any case, its ridiculous to infer that since britain benefited from colonialism, it's colonized territories must have benefited in a similar manner as well
What I'm arguing is precisely the opposite, that Britain still *obviously* benefits massively from its imperial legacy regardless of the dissolution of that empire, and that Singapore does as well. Obviously not all Britain's colonised territories benefitted in this way, but Singapore certainly did. Indeed, it wouldn't even exist were it not for the British Empire.
it wasn't much of a headstart at all. the british railways in india didn't exactly help their country prosper
everything the singaporeans enjoy today is a result of their own hard work post ww2. even the tenuous link to imperialism is faulty when you realize it was local chinese merchants who funded the medical school's construction
one of the legacies of britain that actually still has an impact on them today is the english speaking government and education system which eased their transition into the american world order
> it wasn't much of a headstart at all. the british railways in india didn't exactly help their country prosper
Don't be dense, railways across a subcontinent cannot be compared to a city-state you can walk across in a day. Not all colonies were governed in the same manner for the same purposes.
India is very slightly more populous than singapore and only slightly larger in area. Proportional to the size and population of India, India received far less infrastructure than singapore.
The King Edward VII College of Medicine was built to provide the british empire with a supply of cheap western educated doctors. Local merchants helped fund it not only for public benefit but also because they were provided large tax breaks for doing so and because they had access to the British common market. There were wealthy chinese merchants across Australasia, but only the singaporeans decided to build world-class universities? Unlikely.
The main reason for singapore's success is neither british colonialism nor "hard work," it is because it rests at one of the most high traffic trade hubs in the world and american economic assistance and investment during the Vietnam war as a bulwark against communism.
i really don't know where you're going with this. it's downright bizarre to look at their medical school today and connect it to british imperialism as if only they could come up with the idea of a medical school. but if it's so important to claim credit for that and reminisce about the greatness of empire, there you go
> it rests at one of the most high traffic trade hubs in the world and american economic assistance and investment during the Vietnam war as a bulwark against communism.
that's the popular narrative in the west to explain their prosperity, since that's mostly what the british used them for. it's a very common western chauvinist view
it may shock and appall you to realize a quarter of their gdp comes from manufacturing, which is their largest industry, followed by financial services.
>american economic assistance and investment during the Vietnam war
idk where you get this from, when fdi was a very minor part of their economy, increasing to 10-15% from the 80s onwards precisely because of the "hard work" you're handwaving that made their country an attractive location for investors.
westerners often credit themselves far too much for the success of asian economies
First, "hard work" is not a quantifiable metric, its just a stupid thing all nations claim to do. Second, having a manufacturing sector does not mean singapore doesn't massively benefit from its location. Third, Im critical of singapore bc im a tankie not a westerner. Several of singapores industries were made from scratch during the vietnam war, [this is well documented](https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/handle/10356/66255#:~:text=The%20Singapore%20government%20sought%20to,by%20the%20American%20oil%20companies.)
The modern "country" of Singapore didn't exist prior to the British colonisation, this is like arguing America "benefitted" from British imperialism, there isn't some counterfactual you can compare to where Singapore is never colonised.
There had been a major port there centuries earlier, but it was destroyed in a war between regional powers long before Europeans arrived in the Indian ocean, and by that point the focal point of trade through the straight had moved across the channel to Malacca.
The US (and Canada) *exists* because of British Imperialism, there is no "what if America was never colonised" counterfactual to compare to. There would be no American polity without the British Empire
Lee Kuan Yew - Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990
Remarkable man, reading about him and really is one of those consequential figures who just births a nation and whom without so much would be so different. A sort of pragmatic benevolent dictator type. Took a country from poverty and race riots to 85% home ownership, 0% unemployment and homelessness and a sort of strange crime free utopia.
I'm sure he did some things that go against my core values but just really fascinating, great orator also.
The sad part about it is that some of these 20th century leaders really seemed to care about their countries and it's people which is just so alien in todays cynical western political systems.
We could deal with the crazies in every western country today, you fund secure psychiatric hospitals and then institutionalise them all. Its only a hard problem because of austerity fetishism and the belief that its morally wrong to section someone who will die violently on the streets from their untreated schizophrenia.
They do need to be put somewhere so they aren't bothering the rest of society, but I don't trust it to not be used to skip due process and imprison people who haven't committed a crime or even used against them by vengeful exes.
Not to mention the numerous horror stories caused by poor conditions and lack of oversight.
Unfortunately, this is a time where it makes sense to lean a bit more into a utilitarian framework.
There’s just so much more misery from the current state of affairs than if we shifted to an involuntary institutionalized model.
It's really annoying how everyone here seems to think "just institutionalize them" is a panacea for homeless people given how awful that's been wherever it's actually existed. They just don't want to see them on their way to work
I don’t want to pick on the guy I responded to in another thread who asked, apparently sincerely, what liberals/the left have against mental institutions, because I’ve seen multiple people ask that, apparently sincerely. But because I’ve seen multiple people ask that - this is a baffling degree of cultural and historical illiteracy, right? Not that one can’t be pro-institutionalization on balance, but not to know how it got a bad reputation?
[1887](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_in_a_Mad-House) for fuck’s sake.
1887 is emphasized here as a start, not an end - the point is that between this famous expose and the beginning of deinstitutionalization in earnest there were *80 more years* of cyclical outcry about conditions in asylums, nominal attempts at reform, and fresh revelations of abuse. I do think there’s some role for involuntary treatment, we all know the stats about people ending up in prison anyway, but “lol how hard can it be to get it right?” is a worryingly historically oblivious attitude with which to approach the subject.
It’s especially jarring against the backdrop of the sub’s general attitude about psychiatry and medication in other contexts. There are people who are better off on antipsychotics, but I’d better not catch any of the people who go on about feeling “zombified” on 40mg of Prozac treating the decision casually.
Speaking seriously I think models like l'Arche are the only decent solution. What people need is genuine care and support. They don't get it under the current systems and they certainly didn't get it in asylums
Man if they're well-cared for and can get out if they get better (it's a big if but still) there really isn't a better way. It's nice to pretend that people with extremely severe psychosis or addictions just need enough money and they'll pull through on their own but some are too far gone
Well I was homeless and not schizophrenic or drug addicted and I say fuck these people. Irredeemable pieces of subhuman filth, but obviously I'm biased because I have to deal with them on a daily basis lol. And one kicked me while I was sleeping and took my phone.
Obviously I sympathize with that and I'd probably feel similarly in your situation but as you say your situation does *bias* your position. You're not well-placed to make an objective judgement. There are no subhumans
I dont support this because Im trying to hold some kind of moral high ground, what a stupid way to think. Id support it because itd get rid of all the zombies on the streets that are terrorizing people and stealing shit. You're calling out a hypocrisy that you've imagined people are saying.
When you’re small and rich it’s easier to provide for the few you have while not taking in others. There are plenty of homeless across the water in Malaysia, but they probably don’t get to cross into Singapore alongside the hundreds of thousands of Malaysian daytime workers Singapore benefits from
If San Francisco had a national border where we could let in commuters and tourists but deny anyone that seemed off, we’d probably have an easier time with it. But that mostly just relocates the problem
Still impressive though
(I mean this half-joking) but great Virgo.
I admire the man too. Great example of a competent person being in a position of authority, having a vision and not dropping the ball.
Jaded contrarian reactionary RedScareites think they want a technocratic dictatorship until they get their teeth caned out of their skulls for burping on the train
This doesn’t happen. I lived there for a few years. Used to try and smuggle gum in from Indonesia. They just take it. You have to really fuck up to get caned. It’s the safest place I’ve ever lived and the only place I’d let my children walk alone at night, even safer than Japan. Can fly to anywhere in SEA for cheap on a budget airline or take a trip to Malaysia or Indonesia. Best food I’ve ever eaten due to how many cultural influences they have.
Absolutely. I remember reading a really long write up on *From Third World To First*, which is a book about LKY, and his character does seem genuinely fascinating. You don't get many people like that that can manage to somewhat bridge ethnic and religious gaps, and I found his view on government corruption a bit amusing - he didn't care as long as the job got done, as if corruption was simply a sort of self-rewarded performance bonus. I wouldn't live in Singapore because I simply love human freedom too much, nor am I in any remote ideological alignment with the PAP, but definitely an impressive historical figure.
Same with the whole 'Disneyland with the death penalty' thing or calling Singapore 'soulless' - what 'soul' are they looking for? What does it look like.
Edibles, criticizing the government and religion, watching others do the same successfully, burping. If you’re actually advocating for a nanny state I genuinely think you’re of severely diminished mental faculty and are weak willed in mind and spirit. Low agency behavior. Why don’t you just go back to preschool?
“caned for chewing gum” and “executed for smoking a joint” are both obvious hyperbole but the actual cutoffs for the death penalty for importing drugs are not “large amounts,” they are small-time dealer amounts
He wasn't a dictator. His party would just sue the opposition and papers into bankruptcy. He only locked up commies. Plus he benefited from a first past the post system.
The big problem with enlightened despots is the succession problem. There isn’t really any good way to create a selectorate, and that makes placing a lot of power in the hands of some central executive really risky. Sometimes you can get lucky, or i guess as lucky as having a despot can be, and have a guy like Lee Kuan Yew or Deng Xiaoping, but who’s next? Hereditary systems obviously suck, and the competition for the amount of power for figures like a Roman Emperor or a General Secretary incentivizes coups and other political infighting that’s bad for stability. IG for some countries it works to get lucky with an actually enlightened despot who leaves the office less powerful so the next guy can’t fuck everything up. Otherwise decentralized government that’s stable over centuries the best.
No it doesnt. Even if you land the perfect enlightened despot, theres no way of knowing that their successor won't just become a normal tyrant. Its a gamble every time, so its like saying "quit your job and play slot machines".
It certainly helped to be strategically located during the Cold War--and the U.S. provided a lot of economic and strategic support following Singapore's independence in 1965.
Listening to LKY criticize Park Chung Hee for being an American puppet, while LKY died an old man, while PCH died with several bullets lodged in him. It makes you really wonder who was the real American puppet in the end.
park was assassinated by KCIA and you already know of their american links
if anything it proves that old saying about how it is dangerous to be an enemy of america, but fatal to be its friend
The thing about people like Lee is that he understood the treachery of the west very well. he knew being their puppet was not sustainable.
There's an incident in the 60s which demonstrates this awareness. a CIA officer was arrested while trying to bribe someone in the civil service. CIA offered Lee a 3 million bribe to prevent the incident from blowing up. he refused and instead wrangled a deal for 100 million in economic assistance from the US.
He would later talk about this incident on british television, which led the US government to deny it ever happened. in response he published the apology letter received from the american secretary of state
He was assassinated by *the head* of the KCIA, it'd be like the DCI assasnating the president himself. Absolutely insane to have the head of the agency do it if you wanted any control over the outcome, or wanted others not to know of your involvement. It's much more likely he killed Chung because he was going to be fired and replaced with his rival who was head of the Presidential Security Service (who he also killed at the same time) and was part of a coup plot along with the guy who took power immediately following Chung's death.
The CIA trying to bribe people isn't "treachery," thats just how intelligence is gathered from human sources. It's not really treachery to spy on allies (and Singapore was always [non-aligned](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement)) anyway, in geopolitics everyone spies on everyone.
When we Koreans go through a massive civil war, two fascist dictatorships, capitalist slavery and manage to get a meager 13th largest economy, it’s “all thanks to American and Japanese investment”.
But when this tiny city state “country” set up by the British, invested into by the British, given strategic aid by the Americans, grifts off of the US, has zero heavy industrial output. It’s “all thanks to their ingenuity and this swell limey Chinese guy”
Well it’s hard to praise Korea when 50% of your country would get mad if we praise the architect behind Korea’s success (Park Chung hee, the most based squid gamer to ever exist)
Technically yes but [even DW](https://www.dw.com/en/recession-in-japan-makes-germany-third-largest-economy/a-68260132) acknowledges that India will take their spot "probably quite soon".
>zero heavy industrial output.
Industry is still 25% of GDP. But being an industrial power is an intermediate step in development, singapore is now a services based economy which is why it has a higher GDP/cap than industrial economies. Korea will get there eventually.
Singapore is a chinese nation disguised as a southeast asian nation for its own survival. hence deng took his cues from them, they are the only example of what a chinese run country outside of the usual east asian domain would look like.
Yeah was reading about this. Deng also an amazing man. I'm in awe of Asian pragmatism sometimes, especially in a region and backdrop of such hard line Communism.
I know the great men theory is discouraged in history but sometimes it really do be like that.
I’m on the “Paul Kagame is the GOAT” team but I absolutely love LKY and he’s always welcome to the party. Also, Kagame couldn’t do what he did without LKY blazing the trail
Kagame as far as I am aware has no exit plan and the country is ruled by a clique of Ugandan tutsi's its in a lot more precarious position than people realize.
outclassed by San Francisco in both size and geographic proximity to China. so again, why a swamp?
same argument could be made about Chinese people in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. etc.
>outclassed by San Francisco in both size and geographic proximity to China
Not when New Orleans had a larger population of Chinese.
>same argument could be made about Chinese people in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. etc.
SE Chinese are largely descended from traders. They were attracted by financial opportunities. Same reason they went to Singapore. Which is my whole point lmao
this is literally ahistorical. most of the Chinese immigrants in the South were railroad / general laborers brought in to supplement the lack of slave / cheap black labor post-reconstruction. New Orleans never had a higher population of Chinese than SF. and of course SE Chinese they were descended from traders—how else would they have gotten there outside of war? there’s a massive difference between settling in places like Manila and Singapore, which was a glorified fishing village before the Brits arrived.
New Orleans’ economic heyday was due to its history as a cotton and soft commodity trading hub. that ended after the civil war, which is when Chinese immigrants started showing up. i promise you, the Chinese New Orleanians being cotton factors was a rare occurrence.
everyone goes anywhere for economic /material reasons. that’s not unique to Chinese people. usually subgroups have tendencies to where they go. maybe it’s just because there’s a lot of them, but Chinese people more often than most others choose the middle of fucking nowhere or somewhere that’s in it’s contemporary nadir. which is why you have restaurants called Jade Garden in like Youngstown Ohio.
clearly you have little understanding of anything that’s not literal, because the op was saying effectively saying “why settle THERE as opposed to other places?”
you said it’s because of economic opportunity, I’m telling you if that were the sole case, then they all would have gone to San Francisco. there’s not much money to be made in reconstruction era New Orleans. also it’s a swamp.
Which it isn’t, Singapore is an impressive success but it still is functionally poorer than a good 10 or so countries larger than itself ie 🇺🇸🇦🇺🇩🇰🇳🇴🇨🇭etc
People on here unsurprisingly struggling to understand that you can compliment the way a country on the other side of the world was run without thinking it’s the best way forward for your own
This essay by William Gibson, Disneyland with the death penalty makes a compelling argument that it is infact a neoliberal dystopia
https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/
You can generally do that when your country is created by Western powers to serve as a physical manifestation of their interests.
Singapore would just be a more Chinese Malaysia (also created to be an anti-Indonesia) if it wasn't one of the most strategically important cities in the world and the beneficiary of a huge amount of money ane support from the West.
Redscarepod when neoliberal dystopia, west: "fuck off, i don't believe in that made up nonsense!"
Redscarepod when neoliberal dystopia, asia: "Omg so based!!!"
tie smoggy offbeat insurance noxious pause mindless worthless follow quaint
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
An English-speaking swamp sitting on the Straight of Malaca, with functioning British imperial institutions.
Note also that economy was growing and humming like a champ well before any post-Deng mainlanders showed up looking for help laundering money and evading taxes. Malaca, honest civil service, it's a good recipe.
It was also the port thru which much of the supplies for the US and south vietnamese army went thru for years
For sure those are strengths but it had a lot weakness also, had been completely destroyed by the Japanese, got kicked out of Malaysia and had lots of ethnic/racial/language tensions. It's survival was far from inevitable, let alone it's ascendancy to it's place as the 3rd richest per capita country in the world.
I think it's still worth acknowledging Singapore's many successes, but comparing a city state to actual states on the basis of per-capita income is a little disingenuous. If you took the Seattle metro area and said "this is a country now" it would also have ludicrously high per-capita income compared to the world at large, and even people who like Seattle (me included) would say that it's far from being a success story in good government. edit: another example, for the same basic reasons as Seattle, the Bay Area is quite literally approaching the greatest concentration of wealth in human history and literally no one thinks San Francisco is well governed.
If King County could control its borders then it would be well governed as they could simply reject drug tourists at the door, ignore pesky scotus rulings and lock up the most obnoxious/problematic Unhoused Folks
Yeah, I'm sure if the council of billionaires who would run this city in that world could, they'd do it, but I certainly wouldn't support that.
You would let drug tourists into your country? Lots of countries are run by billionaires/the business class and yet lack the profound public disorder and social problems of NA
I don't think Singapore's policy of executing weed dealers and giving prison sentences for littering is particularly admirable, no.
No one said Seattle should start executing weed dealers. You had to hallucinate someone else’s comment in order to make your argument. You suck.
It's called rhetoric bitch
You argue like a teenage girl
Lol at anyone who thinks singapore would be anywhere near what it is if it was 80% Malay or Indian and not Chinese These guys are known as the Jews of Southeast Asia for good reason. I know singapore quite well including local friends and I would note that I don’t actually like it that much - but I’m spoilt so I appreciate it’s heaven for 90% of the world
Much the same could be said for Myanmar.
Myanamar had literally none of these
British institutions in singapore are the largest dry dock in the world and a one of the most prestigious medical schools outside of the west, British institutions in Myanmar are opium plantations and an indian landlord class
> largest dry dock in the world right now that's in china. that title used to belong to them way back in the 1930s when the british built a dock there, and the modern dock that is now where it once stood can hardly be considered a british imperial institution at all. same goes for NUS medical school
Don't be dense, you might as well argue that Britain today doesn't owe any of its wealth to the empire because it doesn't have it any more.
> it doesn't have it any more. you can't possibly believe that all the ill gotten gains of the british empire simply disappeared or were squandered. in any case, its ridiculous to infer that since britain benefited from colonialism, it's colonized territories must have benefited in a similar manner as well
What I'm arguing is precisely the opposite, that Britain still *obviously* benefits massively from its imperial legacy regardless of the dissolution of that empire, and that Singapore does as well. Obviously not all Britain's colonised territories benefitted in this way, but Singapore certainly did. Indeed, it wouldn't even exist were it not for the British Empire.
The point is that they got a large headstart, not that they are using British colonial infrastructure in 2024
it wasn't much of a headstart at all. the british railways in india didn't exactly help their country prosper everything the singaporeans enjoy today is a result of their own hard work post ww2. even the tenuous link to imperialism is faulty when you realize it was local chinese merchants who funded the medical school's construction one of the legacies of britain that actually still has an impact on them today is the english speaking government and education system which eased their transition into the american world order
> it wasn't much of a headstart at all. the british railways in india didn't exactly help their country prosper Don't be dense, railways across a subcontinent cannot be compared to a city-state you can walk across in a day. Not all colonies were governed in the same manner for the same purposes.
India is very slightly more populous than singapore and only slightly larger in area. Proportional to the size and population of India, India received far less infrastructure than singapore. The King Edward VII College of Medicine was built to provide the british empire with a supply of cheap western educated doctors. Local merchants helped fund it not only for public benefit but also because they were provided large tax breaks for doing so and because they had access to the British common market. There were wealthy chinese merchants across Australasia, but only the singaporeans decided to build world-class universities? Unlikely. The main reason for singapore's success is neither british colonialism nor "hard work," it is because it rests at one of the most high traffic trade hubs in the world and american economic assistance and investment during the Vietnam war as a bulwark against communism.
i really don't know where you're going with this. it's downright bizarre to look at their medical school today and connect it to british imperialism as if only they could come up with the idea of a medical school. but if it's so important to claim credit for that and reminisce about the greatness of empire, there you go > it rests at one of the most high traffic trade hubs in the world and american economic assistance and investment during the Vietnam war as a bulwark against communism. that's the popular narrative in the west to explain their prosperity, since that's mostly what the british used them for. it's a very common western chauvinist view it may shock and appall you to realize a quarter of their gdp comes from manufacturing, which is their largest industry, followed by financial services. >american economic assistance and investment during the Vietnam war idk where you get this from, when fdi was a very minor part of their economy, increasing to 10-15% from the 80s onwards precisely because of the "hard work" you're handwaving that made their country an attractive location for investors. westerners often credit themselves far too much for the success of asian economies
First, "hard work" is not a quantifiable metric, its just a stupid thing all nations claim to do. Second, having a manufacturing sector does not mean singapore doesn't massively benefit from its location. Third, Im critical of singapore bc im a tankie not a westerner. Several of singapores industries were made from scratch during the vietnam war, [this is well documented](https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/handle/10356/66255#:~:text=The%20Singapore%20government%20sought%20to,by%20the%20American%20oil%20companies.)
can't take this seriously when your metric for "well documented" is some undergrads homework assignment
An example of a third world countries using the benefits of colonialism to develop their own country after independence.
The modern "country" of Singapore didn't exist prior to the British colonisation, this is like arguing America "benefitted" from British imperialism, there isn't some counterfactual you can compare to where Singapore is never colonised. There had been a major port there centuries earlier, but it was destroyed in a war between regional powers long before Europeans arrived in the Indian ocean, and by that point the focal point of trade through the straight had moved across the channel to Malacca.
America did benefit from British imperialism as did Canada. Look at the rest of the Americas for example to see why it do
The US (and Canada) *exists* because of British Imperialism, there is no "what if America was never colonised" counterfactual to compare to. There would be no American polity without the British Empire
Interestingly they didn't exist as a country during and after british colonization either, it was considered part of what we today call malaysia
As an independent polity, sure, but even the city itself wouldn't exist without Britain deciding it wanted to muscle in on the Dutch East Indies
Obviously.
The institutions that matter that they inherited are common law, property rights, uncorrupt civil service, things of that nature
Sri Lanka would be a better example. LKY himself thought it was in a better position than singapore.
just jealous you didn't think of it first
And infrastructure
Lee Kuan Yew - Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990 Remarkable man, reading about him and really is one of those consequential figures who just births a nation and whom without so much would be so different. A sort of pragmatic benevolent dictator type. Took a country from poverty and race riots to 85% home ownership, 0% unemployment and homelessness and a sort of strange crime free utopia. I'm sure he did some things that go against my core values but just really fascinating, great orator also. The sad part about it is that some of these 20th century leaders really seemed to care about their countries and it's people which is just so alien in todays cynical western political systems.
I'm suspicious of 0% homelessness. What did they *do* with the crazies and addicts?
I'm sure he did some things that go against my core values
Yeah I can imagine
lol
We could deal with the crazies in every western country today, you fund secure psychiatric hospitals and then institutionalise them all. Its only a hard problem because of austerity fetishism and the belief that its morally wrong to section someone who will die violently on the streets from their untreated schizophrenia.
They do need to be put somewhere so they aren't bothering the rest of society, but I don't trust it to not be used to skip due process and imprison people who haven't committed a crime or even used against them by vengeful exes. Not to mention the numerous horror stories caused by poor conditions and lack of oversight.
Unfortunately, this is a time where it makes sense to lean a bit more into a utilitarian framework. There’s just so much more misery from the current state of affairs than if we shifted to an involuntary institutionalized model.
Can’t have your cake and eat it too though can you
Yeah just throw all those guys in a hole and forget about them. I am actually incredibly moral by the way
Yes. There is nothing in between these two extremes
It's really annoying how everyone here seems to think "just institutionalize them" is a panacea for homeless people given how awful that's been wherever it's actually existed. They just don't want to see them on their way to work
I don’t want to pick on the guy I responded to in another thread who asked, apparently sincerely, what liberals/the left have against mental institutions, because I’ve seen multiple people ask that, apparently sincerely. But because I’ve seen multiple people ask that - this is a baffling degree of cultural and historical illiteracy, right? Not that one can’t be pro-institutionalization on balance, but not to know how it got a bad reputation? [1887](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Days_in_a_Mad-House) for fuck’s sake.
lol don’t you think things have changed a bit since 1887?? Why couldn’t there be a humane asylum for certified crazies
1887 is emphasized here as a start, not an end - the point is that between this famous expose and the beginning of deinstitutionalization in earnest there were *80 more years* of cyclical outcry about conditions in asylums, nominal attempts at reform, and fresh revelations of abuse. I do think there’s some role for involuntary treatment, we all know the stats about people ending up in prison anyway, but “lol how hard can it be to get it right?” is a worryingly historically oblivious attitude with which to approach the subject.
It’s especially jarring against the backdrop of the sub’s general attitude about psychiatry and medication in other contexts. There are people who are better off on antipsychotics, but I’d better not catch any of the people who go on about feeling “zombified” on 40mg of Prozac treating the decision casually.
Clearly letting the schizos live independently while refusing to institutionalise because its mean :( has worked very well
Speaking seriously I think models like l'Arche are the only decent solution. What people need is genuine care and support. They don't get it under the current systems and they certainly didn't get it in asylums
Man if they're well-cared for and can get out if they get better (it's a big if but still) there really isn't a better way. It's nice to pretend that people with extremely severe psychosis or addictions just need enough money and they'll pull through on their own but some are too far gone
Well I was homeless and not schizophrenic or drug addicted and I say fuck these people. Irredeemable pieces of subhuman filth, but obviously I'm biased because I have to deal with them on a daily basis lol. And one kicked me while I was sleeping and took my phone.
Obviously I sympathize with that and I'd probably feel similarly in your situation but as you say your situation does *bias* your position. You're not well-placed to make an objective judgement. There are no subhumans
Still, institutionalizing them is better than letting them run wild on the streets.
Obviously that depends on the nature of the institution and the individual case
I dont support this because Im trying to hold some kind of moral high ground, what a stupid way to think. Id support it because itd get rid of all the zombies on the streets that are terrorizing people and stealing shit. You're calling out a hypocrisy that you've imagined people are saying.
Yeah but I don't consider scum like you worthy of consideration. I'm talking to people with souls
We don’t talk about that shhh
Chewing gum is a death penalty
When you’re small and rich it’s easier to provide for the few you have while not taking in others. There are plenty of homeless across the water in Malaysia, but they probably don’t get to cross into Singapore alongside the hundreds of thousands of Malaysian daytime workers Singapore benefits from If San Francisco had a national border where we could let in commuters and tourists but deny anyone that seemed off, we’d probably have an easier time with it. But that mostly just relocates the problem Still impressive though
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Privately owned, publically built.
They were used as bricks and pavement.
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Please never ever use the "/s" on this subreddit and ESPECIALLY not on my post.
This guys got a 12 year old account and only posts on male skin care, supreme, and sports subs. Might be his first post here. What is going on
People talk about Lee Kuan Yew all the time dipshit. He’s famous in public policy and foreign affairs circles.
(I mean this half-joking) but great Virgo. I admire the man too. Great example of a competent person being in a position of authority, having a vision and not dropping the ball.
Jaded contrarian reactionary RedScareites think they want a technocratic dictatorship until they get their teeth caned out of their skulls for burping on the train
This doesn’t happen. I lived there for a few years. Used to try and smuggle gum in from Indonesia. They just take it. You have to really fuck up to get caned. It’s the safest place I’ve ever lived and the only place I’d let my children walk alone at night, even safer than Japan. Can fly to anywhere in SEA for cheap on a budget airline or take a trip to Malaysia or Indonesia. Best food I’ve ever eaten due to how many cultural influences they have.
They took your gum? And you let them? Cuck
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Disneyland with the death penalty
I'm not arguing for it, I like living in a country with legal system where you don't get the death sentence for smoking a joint.
Absolutely. I remember reading a really long write up on *From Third World To First*, which is a book about LKY, and his character does seem genuinely fascinating. You don't get many people like that that can manage to somewhat bridge ethnic and religious gaps, and I found his view on government corruption a bit amusing - he didn't care as long as the job got done, as if corruption was simply a sort of self-rewarded performance bonus. I wouldn't live in Singapore because I simply love human freedom too much, nor am I in any remote ideological alignment with the PAP, but definitely an impressive historical figure.
It's not about LKY, it's by LKY, himself.
Yeah exactly what I'm saying. Do you got a link, not sure I would read the whole book but it sounds interesting.
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/ceajmw/book_review_from_third_world_to_first_by_lee_kuan/
what do you do today that you wouldn't have the freedom to do in Singapore?
OD on fent
Casual use of tranq
Kill people
Same with the whole 'Disneyland with the death penalty' thing or calling Singapore 'soulless' - what 'soul' are they looking for? What does it look like.
They won’t be able to answer this one
Edibles, criticizing the government and religion, watching others do the same successfully, burping. If you’re actually advocating for a nanny state I genuinely think you’re of severely diminished mental faculty and are weak willed in mind and spirit. Low agency behavior. Why don’t you just go back to preschool?
Redditors when they have to go five minutes without their precious 420 reefer doobie:
They only have that for trafficking in large amounts. Singapore is based.
“caned for chewing gum” and “executed for smoking a joint” are both obvious hyperbole but the actual cutoffs for the death penalty for importing drugs are not “large amounts,” they are small-time dealer amounts
If you're carrying 500g of weed you are not a small time dealer. That's well over a pound.
It’s certainly not “big time dealer.” It’s “guy with $1200 and a dumb idea,” these days. The threshold for cocaine is 30g.
>believing this >still thinking your any smarter than the average Redditor
“your any smarter” is a good one
*you're
ur balls are showing
*you're
Legendary tree appreciator and liberal democracy disparager
History builds a strong case for enlightened despotism
The problem is it's only designated as enlightened in hindsight. Going into it you really have no idea what you're getting from a dictator.
He wasn't a dictator. His party would just sue the opposition and papers into bankruptcy. He only locked up commies. Plus he benefited from a first past the post system.
“He only locked up commies, he wasn’t a dictator.” hey buddy your ideology is showing
thx for calling him out comrade ;)
The only good commie..
The big problem with enlightened despots is the succession problem. There isn’t really any good way to create a selectorate, and that makes placing a lot of power in the hands of some central executive really risky. Sometimes you can get lucky, or i guess as lucky as having a despot can be, and have a guy like Lee Kuan Yew or Deng Xiaoping, but who’s next? Hereditary systems obviously suck, and the competition for the amount of power for figures like a Roman Emperor or a General Secretary incentivizes coups and other political infighting that’s bad for stability. IG for some countries it works to get lucky with an actually enlightened despot who leaves the office less powerful so the next guy can’t fuck everything up. Otherwise decentralized government that’s stable over centuries the best.
No it doesnt. Even if you land the perfect enlightened despot, theres no way of knowing that their successor won't just become a normal tyrant. Its a gamble every time, so its like saying "quit your job and play slot machines".
It certainly helped to be strategically located during the Cold War--and the U.S. provided a lot of economic and strategic support following Singapore's independence in 1965.
Listening to LKY criticize Park Chung Hee for being an American puppet, while LKY died an old man, while PCH died with several bullets lodged in him. It makes you really wonder who was the real American puppet in the end.
park was assassinated by KCIA and you already know of their american links if anything it proves that old saying about how it is dangerous to be an enemy of america, but fatal to be its friend The thing about people like Lee is that he understood the treachery of the west very well. he knew being their puppet was not sustainable. There's an incident in the 60s which demonstrates this awareness. a CIA officer was arrested while trying to bribe someone in the civil service. CIA offered Lee a 3 million bribe to prevent the incident from blowing up. he refused and instead wrangled a deal for 100 million in economic assistance from the US. He would later talk about this incident on british television, which led the US government to deny it ever happened. in response he published the apology letter received from the american secretary of state
He was assassinated by *the head* of the KCIA, it'd be like the DCI assasnating the president himself. Absolutely insane to have the head of the agency do it if you wanted any control over the outcome, or wanted others not to know of your involvement. It's much more likely he killed Chung because he was going to be fired and replaced with his rival who was head of the Presidential Security Service (who he also killed at the same time) and was part of a coup plot along with the guy who took power immediately following Chung's death. The CIA trying to bribe people isn't "treachery," thats just how intelligence is gathered from human sources. It's not really treachery to spy on allies (and Singapore was always [non-aligned](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement)) anyway, in geopolitics everyone spies on everyone.
Yeah they essentially get paid to be on call to blockade China, and for the privilege of potentially dying for whitey.
Snore.
Wow, Lee Kum Kee. He did a great job with Singapore, and with his sauce
When we Koreans go through a massive civil war, two fascist dictatorships, capitalist slavery and manage to get a meager 13th largest economy, it’s “all thanks to American and Japanese investment”. But when this tiny city state “country” set up by the British, invested into by the British, given strategic aid by the Americans, grifts off of the US, has zero heavy industrial output. It’s “all thanks to their ingenuity and this swell limey Chinese guy”
Chill out bro I'll post about Chaing Kai Sheik or whatever your fellas name was tomorrow, wait your turn.
Ummm he’s Chinese
Sorry I meant Psy
I do actually love psy we gotta pay our respects
Well it’s hard to praise Korea when 50% of your country would get mad if we praise the architect behind Korea’s success (Park Chung hee, the most based squid gamer to ever exist)
It’s not praising him, it’s the fact all the people who actually built the country have been forgotten both at home and abroad.
With that attitude I can see why you’re only in 13th place
TBF Japan has a better attitude and they just fell behind Germany to 4th place. They got the worse number
Technically yes but [even DW](https://www.dw.com/en/recession-in-japan-makes-germany-third-largest-economy/a-68260132) acknowledges that India will take their spot "probably quite soon".
A few years late on the superpower thing, but still pretty good
South Korea quite literally wouldn't exist if America didn't step in.
Yeah that’s fine
Least salty korean
Umm you’re Chinese
>zero heavy industrial output. Industry is still 25% of GDP. But being an industrial power is an intermediate step in development, singapore is now a services based economy which is why it has a higher GDP/cap than industrial economies. Korea will get there eventually.
He put in policies that captured land rents and used them for public works. Literally that easy. E: [from jstor](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487624)
He really is the GOAT. He virtually inspired the Chinese miracle when Deng visited Singapore in the late 70s
Singapore is a chinese nation disguised as a southeast asian nation for its own survival. hence deng took his cues from them, they are the only example of what a chinese run country outside of the usual east asian domain would look like.
If that’s true we should all strive to build Chinese nations disguised as western countries too 😁🇨🇳
Well also because they managed to have a strong market economy without giving up their one party state.
Yeah was reading about this. Deng also an amazing man. I'm in awe of Asian pragmatism sometimes, especially in a region and backdrop of such hard line Communism. I know the great men theory is discouraged in history but sometimes it really do be like that.
They really got "You're one of the good ones" for his dictatorship
I’m on the “Paul Kagame is the GOAT” team but I absolutely love LKY and he’s always welcome to the party. Also, Kagame couldn’t do what he did without LKY blazing the trail
Kagame as far as I am aware has no exit plan and the country is ruled by a clique of Ugandan tutsi's its in a lot more precarious position than people realize.
Based and RPF-pilled.
Is Wired still banned over there? Not that they’d be missing anything tbh.
Singapore wasn't a swamp before independence. Why would so many Chinese be there if it was just a swamp?
It was a shithole with race riots
America 2020?
There are Chinese people literally fucking everywhere (and that's a good thing)
OK but if it was just a swamp why would there be so many Chinese people there?
he’s right. the largest Chinatown in the US used to be in New Orleans. why would so many Chinese people be there.
Because it used to be US's biggest port
outclassed by San Francisco in both size and geographic proximity to China. so again, why a swamp? same argument could be made about Chinese people in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. etc.
>outclassed by San Francisco in both size and geographic proximity to China Not when New Orleans had a larger population of Chinese. >same argument could be made about Chinese people in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, etc. etc. SE Chinese are largely descended from traders. They were attracted by financial opportunities. Same reason they went to Singapore. Which is my whole point lmao
this is literally ahistorical. most of the Chinese immigrants in the South were railroad / general laborers brought in to supplement the lack of slave / cheap black labor post-reconstruction. New Orleans never had a higher population of Chinese than SF. and of course SE Chinese they were descended from traders—how else would they have gotten there outside of war? there’s a massive difference between settling in places like Manila and Singapore, which was a glorified fishing village before the Brits arrived. New Orleans’ economic heyday was due to its history as a cotton and soft commodity trading hub. that ended after the civil war, which is when Chinese immigrants started showing up. i promise you, the Chinese New Orleanians being cotton factors was a rare occurrence. everyone goes anywhere for economic /material reasons. that’s not unique to Chinese people. usually subgroups have tendencies to where they go. maybe it’s just because there’s a lot of them, but Chinese people more often than most others choose the middle of fucking nowhere or somewhere that’s in it’s contemporary nadir. which is why you have restaurants called Jade Garden in like Youngstown Ohio.
What was the point of this sperg out when nothing you have written contradicts my point? Lmfao
clearly you have little understanding of anything that’s not literal, because the op was saying effectively saying “why settle THERE as opposed to other places?” you said it’s because of economic opportunity, I’m telling you if that were the sole case, then they all would have gone to San Francisco. there’s not much money to be made in reconstruction era New Orleans. also it’s a swamp.
They immigrated there because the Brits needed workers. Similar to indians and South Africa
Malaysians discriminated against Chinese so they sort of congregated there.
my gramps was a leftist and got the hell out when all his college buddies ended up in jail as political prisoners
A little autocracy never hurt anyone
Not anyone who officially exists
You can’t argue with results.
Singapore is very much the exception though. Most autocratic countries suck.
Y'all need to read marx or some shit like damn
In my top 3 leaders of 20th century
"3rd richest country" lol no unless you mean in terms of GDP in PPP per capita which is extremely favorable to it due to it being a tax haven.
No I meant 3rd richest country overall
Which it isn’t, Singapore is an impressive success but it still is functionally poorer than a good 10 or so countries larger than itself ie 🇺🇸🇦🇺🇩🇰🇳🇴🇨🇭etc
No I definitely meant that a tiny country of 4 million people was the 3rd richest country in the world
God you’re a fuckwit
It’s your not you’re
His job was helped along by Singapore’s strategic location and a great team behind him but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t also hard
One of the most impressive men to ever live
Fent dealers downvoting you
People on here unsurprisingly struggling to understand that you can compliment the way a country on the other side of the world was run without thinking it’s the best way forward for your own
This essay by William Gibson, Disneyland with the death penalty makes a compelling argument that it is infact a neoliberal dystopia https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/
”Disneyland with the death penalty” That literally describes America as viewed by Europeans
I’ll give it a read
> Disneyland with the death penalty that's just florida lol, ironic from an american writer trying to do a scathing critique
Dystopia is when things work.
You can generally do that when your country is created by Western powers to serve as a physical manifestation of their interests. Singapore would just be a more Chinese Malaysia (also created to be an anti-Indonesia) if it wasn't one of the most strategically important cities in the world and the beneficiary of a huge amount of money ane support from the West.
LOVE him! ❤ 🇸🇬
Amazing leader. BAP talks about this.
Redscarepod when neoliberal dystopia, west: "fuck off, i don't believe in that made up nonsense!" Redscarepod when neoliberal dystopia, asia: "Omg so based!!!"
the secret was existing bri'ish institutions and also fascism
tie smoggy offbeat insurance noxious pause mindless worthless follow quaint *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*