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> but other races always give their own race an unjust preference That’s just plain ignorant. And citation needed.
Duke study showing all white jury's was 16% more harsh https://today.duke.edu/2012/04/jurystudy
Despite Singapore's geographical advantages, Lee's achievement in transforming it into a great financial hub is certainly a testament to his capability. However, when you consider his track record 'Operation Clodstore;, the suppression of freedom through defamation laws, and Singapore's early streaming education system — it ultimately seems like he only nurtured people from his own faction, believing that parental background matters.
While criticizing Singapore like this, I suddenly looked up Singapore's statistics. To my surprise, its intergenerational social mobility ranks 20th in the world — higher than I thought. Moreover, I found data showing that South Korea's social mobility is even lower than Singapore's. That made me feel depressed. Of course, with a population of just 5 million, Singapore is easier to manage than larger countries. but stil it functions properly as a nation.
And since Singaporeans reportedly have high life satisfaction, it even makes me question whether authoritarianism is really that bad. But I still dislike authoritarianism based on my personal values.
Still, maybe this is just blind hatred — because I've never been at the center of any industry in my entire life; I've always been an outsider
As he described it, people crammed into shophouses, kampongs (villages) and squatter settlements with no proper toilets (human faeces and urine were carted away by "night soil" men carrying them in open containers in the streets), no clean water, no drainage, no fire safety.
In 1959 barely 9% had public housing. The streets boiled over with riots, strikes and communist agitation, one bloody flashpoint after another.
Work was casual and wages were thin. The British still ruled but had lost all moral authority after the Japanese rolled over across the northern causeway with not much of a resistance from the brits (the idiots were stationed in the southern island of sentosa with their guns pointing south thinking the japanese will invade from the sea) and buggered them in the war.
Singapore was a poor, overcrowded, combustible place with no business surviving, let alone becoming a nation. The hard truth the world forgets: Singapore is an improbable nation. By all logic, it had no right to exist. No natural resources. No hinterland. No oil, no land, no army, no water of its own. Thrown out of Malaysia in 1965, a tiny island of immigrants with three races, four languages and nothing in the bank. By every textbook measure, it should have failed.
It didn't, because of one man's sheer will.
My father now is 90 years old, worked his way up as a menial laborer, put himself through night school, became a successful businessman, and built a family. To my father and his generation, LKY will always be their hero.
From a shit-hole to the first world. In one generation.
Singapore is a strange outlier among successful democratic countries. There's always stories that are untold. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Chin_Siong?wprov=sfla1 Operation Spectrum untracing the conspiracy' https://share.google/2mRpZk3RGaYUKCRXS
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Singapore, like other ex-Colonies in SEAsia prove that having been a colony is not an excuse for not doing well. HK, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea were heavily colonized yet after emerging as independent states were able to overcome difficulties, educate their people, take what they learned from their colonizers and have become leading economies of the world. Governance is more important than one’s history when it c…
The issue has never been previous status as colony but society and culture (East Asian countries and Sinpgapore are all part of the sinosphere culturally).
Japan did not view Korea as a place to enrich for anyone's benefit but Japan. The same with their occupation of Taiwan.
Singapore is a strange outlier among successful democratic countries. There's always stories that are untold. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Chin_Siong?wprov=sfla1 Operation Spectrum untracing the conspiracy' https://share.google/2mRpZk3RGaYUKCRXS
It's not really a proper democracy, the same party has ruled since the founding of the country. There are severe restrictions on speech, assembly, press and important legal and political barriers for the opposition parties. It is very easy to land in front of a tribunal for defamation or similar for expressing dissent or accusing the government of corruption. The truth is that Singapore has been lucky that Lee Kuan Y…
tbf that applies to all democracies, including genuinely competitive multiparty democracies. Would PAP accept defeat and cede power if they handled a crisis so badly an effective opposition party emerged? That's unclear, as is how many of their appointees would support them in that goal, though it is considerably more likely than nations which do not attempt to hold representative elections. But we've also seen the answer to questions of how much success will someone have in explicitly overriding democratic norms and revelling in open corruption be plenty in the United States with all its storied separation of powers and tradition of political freedoms, and perhaps more surprisingly he gave up quietly to wait for the next election was the answer to what would happen when a narrow majority rejected a guy who'd spent years turning Hungary into his personal fiefdom....
The other quirk about the PAP's paternalism is how many of their authoritarian type policies have been primarily driven by a culture of trying to avoid upsetting people, hence years of doublethink on homosexuality and newspapers being told that publishing aerial before and after photographs of Singapore's coastline might be a touch too provocative towards their neighbours.
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Absolutely agree. There's a lot of "yes, but.." in this for me, but the simple economics are pretty clear: post colonial asian states like this do fantastically well. Cost of housing in HK is going to be an embuggerance if they don't fix that, it may bifurcate into a more strong over/underclass imbalance. Taiwan is amazing but has thinner underpinnings now the US has demanded chip manufacturing moves to continental U…
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Singapore is a strange outlier among successful democratic countries. There's always stories that are untold. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Chin_Siong?wprov=sfla1 Operation Spectrum untracing the conspiracy' https://share.google/2mRpZk3RGaYUKCRXS
This part of the history, only mentioned in this one sentence, is the most interesting and relevant for other countries, and is really what sets Singapore apart from other countries in the region.
>Stamford Raffles stands – according to the plaque attached to the plinth – on the ‘historic site’ where he first landed as an agent of the British East India Company on 28 January 1819 and, thereafter, ‘with genius and perception changed the destiny of Singapore from an obscure fishing village to a great seaport and modern metropolis’. This is one of the greatest lies ever told, that Singapore was an obscure fishing…
By the time the Europeans arrived Singapore had long since declined: > However, by the time the Portuguese arrived in the early 16th century, Singapura had already become "great ruins" according to Alfonso de Albuquerque. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Singapore How far back and how much context is required for a simple narrative to not constitute lying? And for a narrative about national origin, is it not…