71–80 of 187 posts
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Oh no! A country that's successfully modernized in 50 years! The horror
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Why does everyone assume democracy is good? It clearly wasn’t necessary for Singapore. A well run “dictatorship” is much better than your average democracy. I would concede that a democracy filled with the right people is the best but in reality it is very rare to come upon a population that is actually ready to govern itself. People generally have extremely reductionist and incorrect opinions about such things in my…
Why does everyone assume democracy is good? It clearly wasn’t necessary for Singapore. A well run “dictatorship” is much better than your average democracy. I would concede that a democracy filled with the right people is the best but in reality it is very rare to come upon a population that is actually ready to govern itself. People generally have extremely reductionist and incorrect opinions about such things in my…
History, largely. Robust democracies are the best defenders of people's rights over time. They're the best self righting mechanism that is available for a nation-state when its economy, civil liberties, and living standards get out of whack. It is also the only way to reconcile a society with large numbers of powerful competing interest groups. It is certainly not perfect but it is, as the old saying goes, better tha…
Why does everyone assume democracy is good? It clearly wasn’t necessary for Singapore. A well run “dictatorship” is much better than your average democracy. I would concede that a democracy filled with the right people is the best but in reality it is very rare to come upon a population that is actually ready to govern itself. People generally have extremely reductionist and incorrect opinions about such things in my…
Democracy is awful in all sorts of ways. Its one major advantage is non-violent succession, something other systems really struggle with. Dictatorships can be great for a whole, but eventually you get a mad dictator or two people who both think they should be the dictator and it all falls apart.
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They use water cannon in the rest of Europe, and even tear gas. What's the problem? They should have had a water cannon for the London Riots in 2012 - and that is why they purchased some. Which the current mayor has selfishly used for political points by selling them off for barely 10k. He will be praying they aren't ever needed.
In the UK we do policing by consent. We aren't interested in attacking our own people. Some other countries could learn by our example. The reason he "selfishly" sold them, by the way, was because they were in poor condition, cost more to keep than to sell, and were actually illegal to use . It is clear to me where you get your news from, based on what you say. It is not encouraging.
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“Which is great” is an understatement. Looking at the other southeast Asian all the countries in ASEAN one starts to realize that Singapore could have been a lot worse off. Instead the GDP per capita is comparable to the United States, and crime is much lower. LKY strikes me as both highly intelligent and pragmatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8GwmsLXOx8 But I guess only time will tell if the system is as good a…
I lived in Singapore for 2.5 years. I mostly remembered him for his psychomumbling of later part of his life. Calling him "doing all things right" is a big stretch. The biggest error of him was to cling to power long after his mind went going. Singapore's economic success was pretty much a meme too. The median income is only ~20000 USD a year, less than half of the economic product per capita. There were three epochs…
This[0] publication puts median household income at $108k SGD or 79.5k USD (and that would actually be higher if adjusted for PPP). The median household income for the US is 59k USD.
[0] https://www.singstat.gov.sg/-/media/files/publications/house...
I see people in this thread surprised that this is happening in Singapore, a “modern” country. Singapore is certainly wealthy, the population is highly educated, institutions aren’t corrupt, all of which is great. However, the political system resembles a democracy only superficially. Every election since 1965 has been won by the same party. It is inconceivable that the People’s Action Party wouldn’t win an election…
> Surely a de facto dictatorship like this shouldn’t be so wealthy and successful[...] It's also worth noting that the entirety of Singapore just barely exceeds the area enclosed by Washington DC's beltway. Whatever their form of government, small city states are always going to be able to avoid many of the pitfalls of larger countries. There's effectively only one level of government to deal with, and the despot is…
I see people in this thread surprised that this is happening in Singapore, a “modern” country. Singapore is certainly wealthy, the population is highly educated, institutions aren’t corrupt, all of which is great. However, the political system resembles a democracy only superficially. Every election since 1965 has been won by the same party. It is inconceivable that the People’s Action Party wouldn’t win an election…
This made me think of some scripture.
> Nevertheless, if it were possible that ye could always have just men to be your kings it would be well for you to have a king. (Mosiah 23:8)
The preceding verse talks about how everyone should be equal ("one man shall not think himself above another") and the following verse talks about the effects of a bad king ("But remember the ainiquity of king Noah and his priests;")
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Similar to America where Republicans and Democrats are really no different from each other in the grand scheme of things.
Wow, Not true, it looks so from where you're sitting. But politics change a lot over time. It's slow moving and in a two party system, you are unlikely to see big differences between either side. That said, the world would have looked differently had Hilary won in 2016.