161–170 of 187 posts
This the country my country's idiot politicians want to model us after, post-Brexit. I despair.
It's possible to imitate their trade policy without copying their lack of civil rights.
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 isn't good, but the alternative isn't to have a dictatorship; it is to not make peoples rights subject to a vote and thus have no need of a government* *courts, etc yes. Government no.
That's like saying “Red, etc., yes, but no colors.”
I would never go to Singapore. They'd probably end up whipping me a hundred times for something I did without even being aware of it. [1] IMHO that whole country should serve as a counterexample to all the rest. Humans really are good at making life miserable for each other aren't they? [1] Maybe farting in public, or wearing my shoes on the wrong feet or whatever.
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> 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…
This sounds like an argument for smaller nations?
It is sometimes used as one, thought it is also sometimes argued that the advantages of city-states are offset by problems (among others, international instability) unless the city-states are relatively rare and economically engaged with (and buffered from each other by) larger polities.
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…
Without that wealth, I think the leaders would be goners.
People are willing to put up with a lot so long as they are gaining wealth, the rules are not so harsh, and there is the perception of rule of law (i.e. no bribery).
Not to inflame the anti-Imperialists :) but I wonder where Singapore would be were they to have a (elected?) Governor from the UK instead of a 'Dictator'. Especially since there is no such thing really as a 'native Singaporean' (i.e. when the British took over it was almost an empty plot) and this is more like a trading post than a colony, it really does question the classical late 20th century narrative views of Imperialism.
I suggest that at very least, this guy could be having his little Skype meeting. But maybe the streets wouldn't be quite so clean?
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In fact, many argue that modern globalization is better suited to smaller forms of government than the XVIII century typical Nation-State on the French model. The concept of "Europe of Cities", on the model of federal Germany, is actually pretty compelling: most citizens of, say, London, have more in common with the citizens of Milan or Prague than they share with home-county backwaters; and the instances of the Brit…
I've long suspected that we should aim for more city states and less bloat. Do you have any further reading on the topic that you would recommend?
Since then, most of the attention has been on tribulations resulting from the common currency, 2008, and migrations, so there is a general unwillingness to rock more boats.
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This sounds like an argument for smaller nations?
City-states have historically lead to far more numerous wars. I won't argue the fact that Cyrus was enormously influential to the course of fertile crescent civilizations. That said, really he was just one of the first Fertile Crescent leaders to see not only the weaknesses of the city-state, but the means by which to exploit those weaknesses. (It's just that what he did to exploit those weaknesses was so radically o…
In a world where everyone sorta-speaks English and the power is in know-how and transnational market access, it counts very little that you can mobilise this or that amount of tanks. It counts even less if those tanks are coordinated at a higher level anyway.
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>that one Dictator in a million Also called an enlightened despot; In the Eastern -Chinese Legalism tradition- a 明君 "míngjūn". There have been instances of them throughout history. But like you said, the problem is usually what happens once the ruler is gone. It's never a (long-term) good idea to have the success of a group dependant on a single person. A political system that produces mediocre-but-stable success (ov…
> what happens once the ruler is gone Well, in the case of Singapore, his son takes over [1]. Interestingly (for the HN crowd) he knows C++ and iirc from an old thread about the current PM, Haskell. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong
He did get a CS master at Cambridge (UK) though, so the C++ bit is likely true.
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> what happens once the ruler is gone Well, in the case of Singapore, his son takes over [1]. Interestingly (for the HN crowd) he knows C++ and iirc from an old thread about the current PM, Haskell. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Hsien_Loong
From the linked sources: "One of [my children] browsed a book and said, 'Here, read this.'" It was a textbook on the Haskell programming language, Lee recounted. "One day that will be my retirement reading." He did get a CS master at Cambridge (UK) though, so the C++ bit is likely true.
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City-states have historically lead to far more numerous wars. I won't argue the fact that Cyrus was enormously influential to the course of fertile crescent civilizations. That said, really he was just one of the first Fertile Crescent leaders to see not only the weaknesses of the city-state, but the means by which to exploit those weaknesses. (It's just that what he did to exploit those weaknesses was so radically o…
You reason in industrial terms, though: nation-states "won" because they were bigger and more resorceful. In a situation where this is not necessaily advantageous, or even disadvantageous (because of centrifugal forces), those considerations are somewhat irrelevant. The URSS had the bigger army (and in some areas, the bigger industrial capacity) and lost the cold war. Turkey has the biggest army in NATO and still str…