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Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

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Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#221

Post by dragonwriter »

hellofunk wrote: post #220
bllguo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#222

Post by [deleted] »

stagehn wrote: post #218
rbg246 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 arre…

[deleted]

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#223

Post by fakedang »

lmz wrote: post #194
pydry wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also noticed that the foreign startups they lured in with their juicy incentives were not the better ones. Nonetheless they probably still believe that the same techniques that brought in Shell in the early days needed to be adapted for the "modern world". Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers.

> Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers. That's just Asia. I don't think a developer is considered "high status" anywhere in Asia.

Top devs in India and China are usually paid on par with the managerial salaries there. I have a bunch of mates who get paid on par with/more than mid-level IB bankers.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#224

Post by rbg246 »

stagehn wrote: post #218
rbg246 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 arre…

Look it's all subjective but their comments were hardly pernicious and divisive - they were a fair observation of the situation.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#225

Post by hellofunk »

dragonwriter wrote: post #221
hellofunk wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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“.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#226

Post by michaelscott »

zhdc1 wrote: post #216
michaelscott wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The approach that seems to work is to give economically elastic things to the free market, and make economically inelastic things (housing, medical care, etc) a responsibility of the state. It's difficult to tell if this is the case as we can only look at macroeconomic effects in hindsight, and this approach would have many problems at scale, but this seems to be the most beneficial approach for society long term?

With a couple of exceptions, how is housing inelastic sans government zoning and other policy restrictions? We're long past the point where the private sector can estimate housing demand on a long enough time scale for single and multi-family housing in most environments. Outside of cases like Manhattan or London, where demand is driven more by wanting to 'live in...' than actual economic necessity, I don't see why h…

Since we're on HN I guess it's safe to assume that you live in the general Bay area, and probably have for most or all of your life, which is only relevant in that if true it's a location which is particularly prone to problematic housing policy and not much else in the way of housing supply (from what I can tell?).

However the view that policy is the only issue to housing just isn't appropriate in many places outside of SF and Singapore is actually a very good example (as is London to a certain degree, expanding inland burroughs notwithstanding): you only have so much space on which to build housing, but the population is variable. If we take the available housing space to be the supply and the population requiring housing to be the demand, you have a textbook case of economic inelasticity.

In Singapore they have ironically solved this with policy, as opposed to exacerbating it, and since this was planned early in the country's developmental phase as an economic policy I can assume they understood this problem as economic one very early on.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#227

Post by nine_zeros »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #207
nine_zeros wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, pleas…

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 min…

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.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#228

Post by langitbiru »

lmz wrote: post #194
pydry wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also noticed that the foreign startups they lured in with their juicy incentives were not the better ones. Nonetheless they probably still believe that the same techniques that brought in Shell in the early days needed to be adapted for the "modern world". Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers.

> Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers. That's just Asia. I don't think a developer is considered "high status" anywhere in Asia.

I wonder why this is the case. I also heard the software engineers are not considered "high status" as well in UK. Not sure in Europe (like Sweden, Germany, etc).

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#229

Post by sumedh »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #219
leafboi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The US is quickly becoming an argument against democracy's.

US has its own problems where a presidential candidate still loses even if he/she gets majority of the votes.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#230

Post by sumedh »

nradov wrote: post #202
threeseed wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Did you consider it an exemplary response when Australian police arrested a pregnant woman for attempting to protest lockdown measures? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824

Did she break the law?
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