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Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

nytimes.com

71–80 of 157 posts

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#71
post #10

For all his shortcomings, LKY has shown the world how well a tiny city-state can do economically with geopolitical leverage and strategic thinking. Especially when it comes to diplomacy vis-a-vis the West, most Asian political leaders are confused (and confusing) at best and belittled (and bewildering) at worst, but no leader of the West fucked with LKY in his prime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexrmTacOAA Once i…

Amazing video. The only other person I've watched handle the press with such clarity and grace is Malcolm X.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#72
post #48

I've lived in Singapore for almost 5 years already and have recently switched citizenships (my son would have to serve in Singapore's military service once he reaches the appropriate age). I have come to appreciate Singapore's style of governance. The sheer efficiency and reliability of government service still surprises me to this day. Having come from the Philippines where bribing somebody in the government to get…

> I am all too willing to sacrifice a bit of freedom to gain stability, reliability, and peace

Bribery as a matter of course for accomplishing mandated tasks is its own kind of servitude.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not meant to be a comparison. I am simply asking why most of this thread is celebrating a man that created a police state that is the model for Asia.

You made the comparison, you can't say it wasn't meant to be a comparison. Strip away the jingoism, and I really don't see how the USA is any less of a police state than Singapore. From stop-and-frisk to civil forfeiture and the TSA, the United States is every bit a police state with just a thin outer layer of constitutional democracy. I've lived in both countries for extended periods, and I know which I'd prefer to…

At least in America, we can bitch about it and (mostly) not be jailed or murdered for it. Heck, sometimes, things even change for the better.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, very few countries come close to that ratio. The poster-child for widespread gun ownership, Switzerland, still only has half as many guns per capita[0] as the US. They also have laws that prohibit most people from carrying loaded guns. The result is a gun homicide rate less than 1/5th that of the US per capita.[1] Yes, intrinsically bad. It's pretty clear to anyone who doesn't live in a gun "bubble". Number one c…

If the attempt is to understand the roots of homicide, rather than just bash one nation or another, it's more instructive to look at homicides [0], rather than homicides of a particular flavor. A careful look at that list will make it clear that elevated homicide rates are a legacy of colonization, at least as much as legal policy. Those in the Americas or Africa can't really be blamed that they were colonized by Eur…

If your argument is that America's problems are caused by Europe, that's pretty embarrassing.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made the comparison, you can't say it wasn't meant to be a comparison. Strip away the jingoism, and I really don't see how the USA is any less of a police state than Singapore. From stop-and-frisk to civil forfeiture and the TSA, the United States is every bit a police state with just a thin outer layer of constitutional democracy. I've lived in both countries for extended periods, and I know which I'd prefer to…

At least in America, we can bitch about it and (mostly) not be jailed or murdered for it. Heck, sometimes, things even change for the better.

You can bitch about police corruption in Singapore -- rare as it is. The media isn't afraid to report, and the government isn't afraid to act.

And sure, you can bitch about it in the USA -- common as it is. Except the media doesn't care (unless you have particularly compelling video footage) and the government is too scared to act.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#76
post #10

For all his shortcomings, LKY has shown the world how well a tiny city-state can do economically with geopolitical leverage and strategic thinking. Especially when it comes to diplomacy vis-a-vis the West, most Asian political leaders are confused (and confusing) at best and belittled (and bewildering) at worst, but no leader of the West fucked with LKY in his prime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VexrmTacOAA Once i…

That was impressive, thank you. Is there a way to search YouTube for other Meet the Press videos from the 1960s?

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#77

Asshole's dead. Good riddance. Stole power on a platform of communism, moved to totalitarianism / familial nepotism, set up his 'wealthy, modern' state by money laundering for Burmese junta, struck up a cheap friendship with US (easy sale: naval positioning for the straits, cable taps on comms, aggressively purchasing regional comms providers in places like .au), did a PR job on .sg's great 'democracy'. His biography…

> set up his 'wealthy, modern' state by money laundering for Burmese junta

D'oh! I've been wondering how Singapore's low-taxing government accumulated all the capital that it invested, and that answer is so obvious: they took it from people somewhere else. Would you mind pointing me to a book that fills in the details?

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#78
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response and the thinking it indicates gave me a chill. You are justifying executing someone based on whether or not they broke a state law, not on whether or not they broke a moral law. Either you think firearm possession is inherently immoral (problematic but defensible position), or you think moral law and state law are equivalent (terrifying position) or you think something else that I haven't thought of. My…

> You are justifying executing someone based on whether or not they broke a state law, not on whether or not they broke a moral law. What are these moral laws you speak of? Your opinions on what is right and what is wrong? The cases you present for firearm possession is simply a case of false dichotomy. Firearm possession is not inherently immoral. The armies of the country would definitely need them to protect the c…

First, we weren't intentionally breaking any law. Second, arguing for or against firearms is beside the point. I'm arguing against people blindly obeying any law, if it comes at the expense of exercising sound personal judgment.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation? I visited last year and went to a tech meetup, and other than myself and a German guy who had been living in the area for 20 years, everyone else out of 60 people was Asian. Quite a few people I spoke to were from China and said they came to the country to study. As I understand they are provided full scholarships if they stay to work for X years after completing their studies. You are right about lower cla…

Plenty of non-rich Mainland Chinese also come to Singapore for work. The ones you meet in tech aren't all of them (likewise, Singapore gets poor/rich workers from India). At some point, a country should provide social mobility to remain healthy. Switzerland is a great example: they take refuges who many take lower-level jobs, but their children are basically Swiss and move up the ladder quickly. Singapore isn't like…

I think this is a very Western-POV argument to make. Like the minimum wage argument, it stems from a belief in a fixed pool of resources being abused by robber barons, or a diluted version of the argument, which may be true in some cases. If you dislike Austrian flavored economics, it's probably not a good idea to keep reading. I will leave aside the fact that Singapore was recently targeting to be 50% immigrant in the near future (and, in practice, is still heading there), and focus on the implied criticism of Singaporean labour policy in your comment and others on this thread.

From an Asian or third world POV, Singapore is creating thousands if not millions of jobs that wouldn't otherwise exist. These workers aren't abducted from their countries and shipped in chains to be sold as free labour as used to be the case in another country just a couple centuries ago. They voluntarily seek income and non-monetary benefits such as living in a country with clean roads, a fair justice system, clean water from the tap, ample food, and pay several times what they'd get at home which goes a LOT further when sent back home to the family (source: I lived and worked in India for an Indian company, on a project involving Pralahad's "bottom of the pyramid"; never was I so grateful to be born in the West).

An illustrative example is the market for maids. Although I don't personally have a house maid, plenty of middle class income families here have a full time one because they can afford it (around $500/month + lodging and food I believe is the going rate, although the families I know pay upwards of $2000). Bump the cost of a maid to a Western minimum wage on a PPP adjusted basis, and the locals will start doing their own cooking and cleaning, and the Pinay ladies who get to spend a few years in Singapore won't have that opportunity anymore. Their jobs mostly won't go to Singaporeans, they'll just disappear, just as your illegal Latina maids in the US would disappear if "la Migra" was more thorough.

Singapore is not responsible for the policy failures of other states (indeed a strong argument can be made for Lee Kuan Yew being instrumental to the bettering of policy and prosperity in a lot of much larger states such as his influence on Deng Xiao Ping, and his part in the creation and direction of ASEAN).

As such my personal opinion, however politically incorrect in the Western ivory tower it may be, is starting to lean towards Western policies being the "inhuman" ones - "close the borders and go protectionist on your labour markets" - with a huge opportunity cost in millions of jobs that simply disappear or become illegal (as with the extraordinary 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to live in the US, over 3% of the population!) which aside from sucking more from a worker point of view, is a breach of the rule of law and therefore yet another attack on the primacy of individual rights.

A strong case can be made for the opposite argument: look at Australia for a tightly regulated foreign labour market, with high worker benefits, a comfortable welfare state, and thus a much flatter society which can be argued to be nicer to live in for citizen. It also has millions of people knocking at the door and being turned away (see any discussion about "Big Australia").

And therein lies the uncomfortable part of any immigration discussion: how do you define who gets rights? What is a citizen? Who is part of my "group"? What defines my home and what do I want in it? We Westerners benefit from excellent borders, so we do not need to think too hard about these things.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91

#80
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Many other countries come close to that ratio. Is there something intrinsically bad about that?

No, very few countries come close to that ratio. The poster-child for widespread gun ownership, Switzerland, still only has half as many guns per capita[0] as the US. They also have laws that prohibit most people from carrying loaded guns. The result is a gun homicide rate less than 1/5th that of the US per capita.[1] Yes, intrinsically bad. It's pretty clear to anyone who doesn't live in a gun "bubble". Number one c…

They also have laws that prohibit most people from carrying loaded guns.

Not sure I understand. Switzerland has 1/2 the guns, but nowhere near 50% of the US' homicide rate. Are you saying the ability to legally carry a gun is the reason for the difference?

The states that legally allow carrying a concealed weapon without a permit (VT, AK) have some of the lowest murder rates of all states.

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