Wow. This article is one of the most compelling I've read in a while. There's even a bit in there about models and reality with respect to (authoritarian) governance and size, and why simplistic schemata suffer from large errors in larger states:
"Decision-makers must rely on simplified models to make their decisions. All schemata are by nature imperfect representations of reality. Indeed, a scheme that reflected reality perfectly would be cluttered and uninterpretable. The reality is always more complex than the plan. In large countries, the planner is further from ground reality than in tiny city-states. Abstractions and errors inevitably compound as the distance increases."
and on first-principles:
"Ironically, Lee Kuan Yew himself had no patience for other people’s models. In his words, “I am not following any prescription given to me by any theoretician on democracy or whatever. I work from first principles: what will get me there?” If there is a lesson from Singapore’s development it is this: forget grand ideologies and others’ models. There is no replacement for experimentation, independent thought, and ruthless pragmatism."
In that sense, Singapore is like a startup at a country-level.
> Singapore is clever enough to keep the democratic process
Mainly it appears to be a democracy. Speak to any of the cab drivers there who feel somewhat liberated to talk safely with a foreigner who is on the way to the airport, and they will tell you something about Singapore's democracy.
Not sure if that's a fair judgement - It seems particularly endemic that it's almost a meme/stereotype in itself in Singapore; that all cab drivers are discontent with the government
Singapore is not a democracy. They have sham elections where the opposition party is only allowed to have media coverage by the single state run media channel for three weeks before the election. If your neighborhood votes for the opposition party you lose funding for things like public transportation. Lee Kuan Yew lives in a giant, gated, guarded compound in the middle of the most valuable real estate in the city.
Also criticizing the government is a crime and saying the wrong thing on facebook can land you in prison.
As always, the truth is somewhere in between what you say and what the government portrays. 38 Oxley Road was owned by the Lees since the 1940s, well before any of them came into power, and well before property prices in Singapore exploded to the level they have now. It is also a stretch to call it "giant" or the "most valuable" piece of real estate, when there are hundreds of bigger houses in the nation. The number of "guards" is also comparable to the state leaders of any other European country, and certainly pales in comparison to the US or some dictatorial nations.
There is some bias in state media coverage, but that is fast becoming irrelevant when the main source of news for people nowadays is social media. Criticizing the government is not a crime, and people regularly do it - one only has to go to the Facebook comments section of the state newspaper to take a look. Making a factually false statement and then gaining significant fame could get a lawsuit filed against you - so tread lightly when making big claims that you have no proof for.
Specifically the opposition candidates get limited time three weeks out from an election. Saying that people are getting more news from the internet is not 'the truth being somewhere in the middle'. Temasek Holdings controls the news paper (which also has a web site) the single local TV channel, the telecoms and the banks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings
yeah... I used to walk in front of that house when I went to school every day. There's like two dudes with guns, and there is a tiny booth of a guard post. My workplace has more security than that.
The current president tried to continue living in her HDB (public housing) after taking office but gave up on advice of security and complaints from neighbours about said security.
Eh, as they said in the article: "Part of the mythos of Lee Kuan Yew is that he succeeded as an authoritarian where so many others have failed." Singapore is the exception; authoritarian governments are almost always bad for the people otherwise.
Benevolent dictatorship is not just a sarcastic phrase, it is sometimes true for some distributions of benevolence in history. The more interesting question is what happens after he passes away, or cannot continue to make decisions.
True -- after all, it is still authoritarian, the only difference is that this authoritarian government seems to care for the wealth of its citizens (although not much else.)
Don't think that the democratic process guarantees a good hand off... it's still a crap shoot and a lucky draw. See current President Camacho of the United States.
Unlike a dictator, the aggregate will of the people never serves the self interest of a single individual. The issue with majority rule is that the aggregate intelligence/judgement of the people is likely not matched with what is required to select a good leader.
The current situation reflects how law and society has lagged behind technolgy and social media. We moved away from moderated information delivery to a torrent of self-published nonsense.
If you want to consider the success of LKY’s first principles, you should probably consider what they are. Free market economics, low taxation, user pays healthcare, restrictive welfare entitlements, restrictive immigration, and no minimum wage.
Singapore is a mostly-benevolent, mostly-single-party state, with rather poor individual freedoms, but an approach to economic liberty and self-reliance that would be considered extremist in most of the west.
I used to live in Singapore. I’m particularly familiar with how they do things.
> No minimum wage
> As a matter of national policy, MOM does not prescribe minimum wages for all workers in Singapore, whether local or foreign. Whether wages should increase or decrease is best determined by market demand and supply for labour.
Singapore doesn’t have an unemployment benefit. You can get a few months worth of assistance if you lose your job. The closest it has is ComCare, which is mostly reserved for invalids.
I have extended family in Singapore. I can assure you that the approach is not some libertarian utopia and neither is it some oligarchic capitalistic system sucker.
It is designed to be practical and constantly adapt to reality.
Today, that means a mixed economy. That means basic human decency will be taken care of by government, the remaining is market driven.
This means housing, food subsidies, education and healthcare is readily made available by the government, not just through price controls. Look up property rights there.
That means high taxes on vehicles, use it to develop a world class mass transit system.
That means, lower taxes on foreign businesses to come operate in Singapore, no xenophobia shown to skilled workers (barring their geographic limitations). This has the consequence of raising high value domestic activity, thus providing locals jobs.
They cannot accept refugees because of size.
That means they absolutely want to be integrated with the outside world, because they realize they absolutely cannot produce everything. Again, can't have xenophobia.
That means lower income taxes because the government doesn't need more money. They have already ensured that cost of living (housing and healthcare) is so low that no one will be bankrupt with routine medical procedures or no insurance scams and medical codes that will suddenly no the covered.
Frankly, sometimes people forget how much work the government has put in there to actually make life so easy that the government doesn't need to be the frankenstein like US govt is.
It's a matter of approach. The government wants to take care of people, not leave them wondering if they will be covered in the next crisis.
This comment reads half like PAP propaganda, and half simply uninformed.
> the approach is not some libertarian utopia
Well there’s no such thing as a real-world utopia. But Singapore, having the free-est market in the world is about as close as you could get.
> no xenophobia
Hmmmm... Chinese racism against pretty much everybody else has been a long standing issue in Singapore. Just go on any Singaporean job listing site and search for “must speak mandarin”.
> basic human decency will be taken care of by government
You can just look at the PAP’s website to see the mental gymnastics in this comment. Here are two of their four core values:
> Meritocratic
> A system that provides citizens with equal opportunities to progress, and for a person's contributions to be recognised and appreciated on the basis of merit.
> Self-reliant
> No one owes us a living. We will avoid creating the dependency syndrome a welfare state generates.
> Hmmmm... Chinese racism against pretty much everybody else has been a long standing issue in Singapore. Just go on any Singaporean job listing site and search for “must speak mandarin”.
What are we talking about? Xenophobia or racism?
Xenophobia is very low in SG. People expect to know foreigners and want foreigners to bring business or capital or skills.
And since you are using PAP values to inform yourself, please read their pledge:
"We, the members of the PAP,
Pledge ourselves to build a strong
United Party, to create a vibrant,
just and equal society,
through achieving excellence by all, so that
every citizen, regardless of race,
language or religion, can enjoy a
full and happy life."
This is from wikipedia:
The PAP symbol (which is red and blue on white) stands for action inside interracial unity. PAP members at party rallies have sometimes worn a uniform of white shirts and white trousers which symbolises purity of the party's ideologies of the government. The party also reminded that once the uniform is sullied, it would be difficult to make clean again.
> No one owes us a living. We will avoid creating the dependency syndrome a welfare state generates.
Do you know what this means in the Asian lens?
It means that they will collectively work to build their living because no other country will help them. It doesn't mean that they are going to leave their citizens homeless on the streets. It doesn't mean that they will let insurance companies shark out the lives out of citizens. They want to build a society where the basics are covered.
About 80% of housing in Singapore is mixed socialized (not the same as handouts or welfare) but a collective system that does things with goals in mind
Maybe it's really hard for people to even imagine how such a government could possibly work. Rest assured that the heavy hand of government takes care of basics so people can use their creativity to thrive on the free market built atop the safety.
Your comments are so easily falsifiable, I hope nobody is taking them seriously.
> Xenophobia is very low in SG. People expect to know foreigners and want foreigners to bring business or capital or skills.
An incredibly consistent social problem Singapore has had is dealing with the fact that Singapore is essentially run by Han Chinese, for the benefit of Han Chinese. Despite the governments best rhetoric, ethnic minorities and foreigners are still widely discriminated against.
> It means that they will collectively work to build their living because no other country will help them.
I really find it hard to believe that you’re actually trying to say LKY was an advocate for collectivism.
> "Cradle-to-grave welfarism blunted the ambition of many budding entrepreneurs. Worse, high personal taxes dampened the desire of many to achieve wealth and success." - LKY
> "the folly of populist politicians who win elections playing the politics of equal rewards or egalitarianism: squeeze the successful to pay for the welfare of the poor, and end up with the equalisation of poverty" - LKY
> About 80% of housing in Singapore is mixed socialized
The HDB scheme does in fact provide a lot of housing. But more specifically, what it does is provide affordable housing for the middle class professionals to buy. If you’re too poor to afford rent, you’re not going to be getting any benefit from the HDB.
I’ve posted reliable sources for every claim I’ve made in this thread. You’re just posting incredibly liberal reinterpretations of reality.
It appears that you have quite a few concepts completely mixed up.
I'm just going to leave it at collectivism != welfare state and xenophobia != racism. I'll allow you to do research on how such societies work.
Further, since you already color me liberal (which is incorrect), I can tell you are extremely biased in your perception of words. So feel free to take some classes in removing bias. It'll help.
The use of "liberal" in that last sentence has a different meaning. In that instance it means "to take liberties with regards to...". I was saying that I think you're "taking the liberty" of infusing your own ideas with what the actual reality of the situation is. Not that your ideas were liberal as in liberal/conservative.
Ah yes. This is correct. That became mandatory after I left.
MedShield Life is still quite restrictive in what it covers though. Even with half the population having additional private insurance, about a third of medical expenditure is out of pocket.
A consistent point of controversy in Singapore is how much MediShield funds the government keeps in surplus reserve.
Total medical expenditure in Singapore is also suppressed somewhat by people choosing not to have treatment.
By subsidize housing you mean that the government builds housing which they then sell to citizens. Which is a form of middle class welfare, but quite different from what most westerners would consider subsidized housing.
If you’re unemployed in Singapore, you get 3 months worth of welfare from the government. After that you rely on your own savings. (Unless you’re permanently disabled)
Going from first principles though, Singapore has a large ethnically Chinese population which tends to take care of family members / elders more than in the west.
Unless western countries are willing to adopt a culture of filial piety where you can live with your parents until you’re married and your parents expect you to take care of them in old age, I don’t see them replicating that feature.
It’s very controlled beyond prostitutes , helpers (maids) and labourers. They even specify which race and sex can do which job . Construction bangledesh (and some others) under 60. You must employ 1 local at 1400 a month to employ 7 Bangladeshi with no minimum wage and house them 24 to a room in what they call a dormitory , some might call a labour camp where COVID was out of control.
Helper , female under 50
https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permits/work-permit-for-fo... sourced from certain country’s only ,
At the professional and executive level it has been capped at about 200k and lowering for the last 10 years (out of about 6mil )
I think because HN's audience is mostly US based there's a high level of bias towards democratic governments.
I think if we all take a look at it from a unbiased angle it's all really apples and oranges. A bad dictator is not so different from a democracy electing bad leaders and a good dictator is not so different from a democracy electing good leaders.
The thing with a democracy is that you have a lot of checks and balances so an elected bad leader can't do much damage... but then again an elected good leader can't do much good either.
I tend to agree -- it seems to me that democracy creates ecological conditions favorable to long-term survival, because the risk of destruction under dictatorship is asymmetric with respect to the probability of prosperity.
Democratic checks-and-balances assume the inescapability of despotic buffoons who rise to power either through force or sometimes even through the people's choice (while it's good to believe in the wisdom of crowds, one must always account for its lapses). I think these are very realistic assumptions.
Hand-waving things away with your absolutist statement is what truly seems naive. IMO there is far more nuance than you suggest.
Democracy seems to work well for some types of problems but not others. What happens to democracies when faced with threats that manifest over very short timescales? They aren't nimble enough to respond in time. This is most evident in larger democracies; look at US/India responses to COVID. Countries like Taiwan are democratic and still succeeded, but they are small and they utilized methods that would be characterized as authoritarian here in the US.
What about problems where the consequences of decisions have a large time-lag? There is no incentive for democratic policymakers to address them. Global warming is the obvious example.
I question whether democracies can handle these kinds of
issues. More worryingly, I think that as humanity's capabilities continue to increase, these kinds of problems are going to be more and more frequent.
Countries like Australia, South Korea and New Zealand have had exemplary COVID-19 responses. It has nothing to do with whether you are a democracy or not and everything to do with the competence of the government.
And the people of the US will have an opportunity to vote in a few months on whether the response was adequate or not. I don't see the people of China having a similar opportunity for example.
I mentioned that I believe problems manifest as scale increases. Do you think there is a difference between implementations of democracy in a large country vs a small one? I do.
To clarify after some further thought - I think the bureaucratic burden scales much more drastically in a democratic system. In a large democracy all decisionmaking becomes mired in a swamp. Of course all governments will require more and more delegation and bureaucracy as the population grows, but IMO to a lesser degree in an authoritarian system, because there is no need to come to a broad consensus before making choices.
Additionally, complexity also scales. A dictatorship relies more on the common sense of the dictator while a democracy relies on a set of written laws that grows with complexity over time. A single party does not need a contract while at least two parties must engage in a contract called a written body of law in order to come to an agreement. This "contract" is edited and amended over time with no limit to how complex it gets.
In fact, that complexity balloons to a point where only experts can understand the law (lawyers). It also grows to the point where the law is so complex that it can become internally inconsistent and develop loop holes that do not serve the original intended purpose of the law.
This allows for entities to exploit these loop holes. Of course only entities with enough money to afford the "experts" to find the loop holes and exploit them will be able bend the laws to their advantage thereby causing only the rich and elite to become more powerful.
The above is the basic theory about the anthropological progression of your typical democracy. Growth in complexity of a body of law to the point where only the elite can afford to hire specialists to take advantage of said law.
That is the main danger of democracy. Excess Complexity to the point where only people who can afford specialists to change the law can exploit it to their advantage. Complexity of law also leads to all kinds of other phenomena that niche experts and common people can take advantage of as well. For example constructors that take advantage of property law.
The scary thing about the theory above is that there is a TON evidence of this. Almost every modern democracy in the world suffers from ALL of the problems above. Literally find me one that doesn't.
I live in Melbourne and her arrest is widely supported. Our city is in a severe lockdown and at a tipping point between New Zealand style suppression and US style chaos.
Just because she is a white, pregnant woman does not mean that she has the right to break the law and compromise the safety of the community.
Because the reaction to her arrest is a good example of white lady in distress.
Whether you agree or disagree with her arrest and release like two hours after this sort of stuff happens all the time with police but it's a big deal if it's a white lady.
Just for the record im not sure I agree with her arrest but you know... Bigger things to worry about
Is "wide support" of her arrest (as framed by the person I was replying to) an example of white lady in distress? That seems like the exact opposite of white lady in distress. Or is the single person who thought the arrest was unjust (further up) an example of white lady in distress?
None of this fits the white lady in distress definition. It just seems like a way to smuggle in anti-white racism for no particular reason. Nothing about this situation has to do with race in any way whatsoever.
The fact that he was replying to a comment that used it as an example of Australia's 'authoritarian' response to covid and the fact that it received widespread news coverage and we all got to see her distress Vs the other guy who got arrested and received zero coverage for the same crime seems to suggest that this it is relevant and on the balance of probabilities a good example of white lady in distress.
He didn't use the 'authoritarian' framing (he sarcastically questioned whether it was 'exemplary'), that's something you're presumptively attributing.
There was not 'zero' coverage of the guy's arrest, to the contrary there was wide coverage as a Google search easily reveals. There's also two factors you're not considering, (1) the guy ran a conspiracy theory group which reduces sympathy for him, (2) the woman's arrest came first so it was more novel and thus more engaging from a clicks perspective.
It's absurd that race is being brought into this as a relevant explanatory dimension. Pernicious and divisive to say the least, leaving aside the fact that there's no evidence that race is in any way relevant to either what occurred in this case or the coverage of the case
One thing about a democracy, if poor choices are made and poor leaders are selected, it’s only temporary until the next wave of elections. But in a dictatorship, or even something that masquerades as a democracy but is not, those choices may go unchecked for decades.
> One thing about a democracy, if poor choices are made and poor leaders are selected, it’s only temporary until the next wave of elections.
With sufficiently bad choices in a democracy it ceases to be a democracy before the error is corrected. Also, even when that doesn't happen, its possible for a choice to be bad but repeated in a democracy.
> With sufficiently bad choices in a democracy it ceases to be a democracy before the error is corrected.
I’d like to see a real world example of what you mean. Because while lots of countries have elections, when leaders are allowed to arbitrarily extend their reign past with their laws allow, then I would agree with you. But those are the countries that I consider falling under the category of “masquerading as a democracy“.
> I’d like to see a real world example of what you mean.
The German Enabling Act of 1933.
> when leaders are allowed to arbitrarily extend their reign past with their laws allow
What if they just use the provisions in the fundamental law that allow changing the structure or terms of government?
A state can either have a thanatocracy in which the dead dictate the details of government to the living, or it can have process by which even the fundamental law can be changed. If it has the latter, that process can, within the preexisting democratic system, be used to terminate democracy without anyone exceeding the power allowed in law.
That seems a bit tautological to include the outcome in the definition. By that logic there are democracies today that will sometime in the future become “masquerading” that we can’t know yet.
You can't predict the future of any country of course, but you can certainly use its past to inform such a distinction. The moves by China and Russia, for example, to lengthen the reign of their leaders, while in the U.S., no matter what has happened to its leadership for the entirety of its history, no one has ever exceeded the time they were allowed before another election risked that tenure.
It's good that it hasn't happened in the US yet, the US luckily has pretty strong institutions it turns out.
But just looking at number of times a democratically elected senate has been dissolved throughout history (Rome, Japan (rise of imperial japan), Germany (third reich), Iran (iranian revolution), etc), there has indeed been a lot of "masquerading as a democracy" going on.
Separation of powers makes it harder to raise a dictator but in some cases it's just another piece of legislation away. Hence, I think Americans ought not to take our democracy for granted.
Some views suggest that the political structure of the United States is in many respects an oligarchy, where a small economic elite overwhelmingly determines policy and law. Some academic researchers suggest a drift toward oligarchy has been occurring by way of the influence of corporations, wealthy, and other special interest groups, leaving individual citizens with less impact than economic elites and organized interest groups in the political process.
A study by political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern University) released in April 2014 suggested that when the preferences of a majority of citizens conflicts with elites, elites tend to prevail. While not characterizing the United States as an "oligarchy" or "plutocracy" outright, Gilens and Page do give weight to the idea of a "civil oligarchy" as used by Jeffrey A. Winters, saying, "Winters has posited a comparative theory of 'Oligarchy,' in which the wealthiest citizens – even in a 'civil oligarchy' like the United States – dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth- and income-protection."
In their study, Gilens and Page reached these conclusions:
When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. ... The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.
— Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, 2014
E.J. Dionne Jr. described what he considers the effects of ideological and oligarchical interests on the judiciary. The journalist, columnist, and scholar interprets recent Supreme Court decisions as ones that allow wealthy elites to use economic power to influence political outcomes in their favor. "Thus," Dionne wrote, in speaking about the Supreme Court's McCutcheon et al. v. FEC and Citizens United v. FEC decisions, "has this court conferred on wealthy people the right to give vast sums of money to politicians while undercutting the rights of millions of citizens to cast a ballot."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote:
The stark reality is that we have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people. This threatens to make us a democracy in name only.
— Paul Krugman, 2012
I would say, again, that the answer is complex and multifaceted. It is not exactly clear whether authoritarianism or democracy is better. One thing is clear though... both are far from perfect.
AFAIK one of LKY’s stated goals was to compete with private corporations for the best talent by paying comparably. DPMs are paid quite handsomely but not incomparable to C suite pay at large companies.
>Singapore's ministers are the highest paid in the world. Prior to a salary review in 2011, the Prime Minister's annual salary was S$3.07 million, while the pay of ministerial-grade officers ranged between S$1.58 million and S$2.37 million.
"Decision-makers must rely on simplified models to make their decisions. All schemata are by nature imperfect representations of reality. Indeed, a scheme that reflected reality perfectly would be cluttered and uninterpretable. The reality is always more complex than the plan. In large countries, the planner is further from ground reality than in tiny city-states. Abstractions and errors inevitably compound as the distance increases."
and on first-principles:
"Ironically, Lee Kuan Yew himself had no patience for other people’s models. In his words, “I am not following any prescription given to me by any theoretician on democracy or whatever. I work from first principles: what will get me there?” If there is a lesson from Singapore’s development it is this: forget grand ideologies and others’ models. There is no replacement for experimentation, independent thought, and ruthless pragmatism."
In that sense, Singapore is like a startup at a country-level.