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Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

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Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#191

Post by JadeNB »

tim333 wrote: post #153
JadeNB wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people would feel safer in Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore than in the USA. Better housing and health policy, less graffiti and street violence. Of all the things wrong with the USA, when picking just two, it seems strange for one of them to be graffiti. I have lived in the USA all my life, in some more and some less urban areas, and even from the people most afraid of cities I have never heard graffiti mentioned as…

Graffiti tends to be a visual indicator of lawlessness and petty crime.

From that perspective, the problems are lawlessness and petty crime, not the graffiti. I would not feel safer in a place just because it had reduced the symptoms of those things, unless it had also reduced those things themselves, in which case the latter is the accomplishment.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#192

Post by Pay08 »

roenxi wrote: post #59
Pay08 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read (and this may very well be outdated), Singapore is generally democratic, but the PAP does such a good job of running the country that people don't vote for other parties.

Yeah we've heard that before from people who turned out to be filthy liars. Not saying it is impossible, the Singapore numbers are borderline plausible, but if the leading party gets more than 60% of the vote I'm going to assume shenanigans unless I've seen some pretty strong evidence beyond what a propaganda department would put out. People don't agree with each other all that much. Opposition can literally just con…

It's pretty common in countries that don't have strong democratic traditions. Democracy is just as much a culture as it is a political system.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#193

Post by anyonecancode »

watwut wrote: post #13
JadeNB wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people would feel safer in Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore than in the USA. Better housing and health policy, less graffiti and street violence. Of all the things wrong with the USA, when picking just two, it seems strange for one of them to be graffiti. I have lived in the USA all my life, in some more and some less urban areas, and even from the people most afraid of cities I have never heard graffiti mentioned as…

You was never attacked by a wild graffiti jumping out of the wall to beat you up? weird /s

A graffito, or a pack of graffiti ;-)

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#194

Post by ValentineC »

Pay08 wrote: post #27
roenxi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea and probably not, but it is a bit more complex than that. There isn't any particular rule saying that the only functional democratic model is multi-party democracy. One could imagine a successful democratic model with one party allowing diverse internal factions, for example. It is really hard to get a read on China, but their success raises some interesting questions of how exactly their internal part…

From what I've read (and this may very well be outdated), Singapore is generally democratic, but the PAP does such a good job of running the country that people don't vote for other parties.

Singaporean here.

The PAP has ruthlessly gerrymandered their way into winning an overwhelming number of seats in recent elections. Most constituencies are Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) [1], which mean that many new PAP candidates can enter by riding on the coattails of a higher-profile veteran.

In 2025, the PAP emotionally blackmailed Singaporeans into voting for a Deputy Prime Minister [2] who was shifted to an at-risk GRC, with promises to navigate Singapore through the US tariffs that came to naught (my eyes are rolling so hard at writing this statement).

The PAP effectively controls the electoral boundaries, because the chairperson of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee [3] is the Prime Minister's secretary, and the other members are all career civil servants who are incentivised to not rock the boat.

If the opposition had been allowed to contest in 2025 again with 2020's electoral constituencies, they would more likely have had far better results [4][5].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_representation_constitue...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gan_Kim_Yong

[3] https://www.gov.sg/explainers/what-is-the-role-and-compositi...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/1jay630/how_did_...

[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/1k6n1ps/another_...

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#195

Post by ValentineC »

claw-el wrote: post #62
epolanski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>The truth is that Singapore has been lucky that Lee Kuan Yew and most of his successors have been good bureaucrats and politicians. That makes the ruling party also somewhat popular. I don’t think this is only by luck. Singapore made the decision to ‘pay the bureaucrats well’ so that they can build a career on it. This attracts more people to be a bureaucrat. The alternative is that only already rich people become p…

One problem is that many bureaucrats seemingly underperform in the public eye, but continue to have job security as long as they have the favour of the leadership.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#196

Post by sillyfluke »

rrvsh wrote: post #167
nerdsniper wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I misread your thesis? It seemed like your strongest argument is “survival must be earned” and your most immediate claim to this is that “Singapore avoids multiculturalism.” And then you kind of go on to imply that because they avoid being multicultural they instead are detail oriented and technically competent. A lack of multiculturalism seems…like a very very nonsensical claim to make about Singapore. Its one o…

It is not nonsensical in the slightest. The government does their best to maintain a monoculture while promoting the farce of multiculturalism, because a monoculture facilitates easier economic growth which is the overall aim of the government rather than cultural development. Multiculturalism is essentially pacification because obviously this is unpopular

>a monoculture facilitates easier economic growth

The why of this is not explained by you nor the original comment referring to the lack multiculturism, it is simply asserted. That's why the original comment came off as nonsensical. More than a quarter Singapore's population are foreign workers, and they make up at least 40% of Singapore's entire workforce. Seeing as the workforce that is driving Singapore's economic growth is not a monoculture your claim needs a little tweeking I would think.

I'm not claiming this means Singapore is embracing multiculturalism in the same way I don't claim the UAE embraces multiculturalism due to similar foreign workers dynamics, but not putting a disclaimer involving these stats while talking about the benefits of monoculture and lauding a country for its realism is a ridiculous sidestepping of reality. Both Singapore and the UAE are extremely cosmopolitan.

>Multiculturalism is essentially pacification because obviously this is unpopular

Why would it be unpopular to the dominant monoculture to maintain the monoculture? Who is being pacified when a country embraces multiculturalism? Please explain.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#197

Post by fmajid »

Lee not only turned Singapore from a country poorer than India into one of the richest in the world, but he was also the one who convinced Deng Xiaoping to adopt market reforms, thereby pulling hundreds of millions of Chinese out of abject poverty. Truly one of the greatest statesmen of the last century.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#199

Post by nlitened »

cholantesh wrote: post #72
nsoonhui wrote: post #50

In this kind of discussion, you cannot disentangle the fate Singapore from Malaysia. The comparison between the two is interesting. When Singapore was squirted out from Malaysia in 1965, it had no natural resources, surrounded by hostile Muslim nations ( though not as bad as Israel, but still), and no one to depend on, except themselves. The Malaysian Ringgit vs Singapore dollars was 1 to 1 back then in 1970s. And no…

>surrounded by hostile Muslim nations ( though not as bad as Israel, but still) What a bizarre non-sequitur.

I think "non-sequitur" is an incorrect phrasing here, it means "does not follow logically from the conversation that preceded it".

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

#200

Post by gmerc »

kardianos wrote: post #138
RivieraKid wrote: post #110

I've recently went into a rabbit hole of learning about Singapore. It's fascinating that you can transform a developing country into a country that's almost on the level of Switzerland in 60 years. I wonder what's the responsibility of various factors behind their success. Is it mainly the people? Strategic location? Great governance and policies?

Lee had a dedication to results, not ideology. Survival is not right; survival must be earned. They explicitly avoid multi-culturalsim and groom technically competent, detail oriented bureaucrats and politicians. In other words, they view reality as real and consequential, and they do what works and take the next step.

Bullshit - Singapore is managed multicultural like no other nation. We integrate faith - halal options in every food center, the public holidays of 4 major faiths, 4 languages, culture associations and centers, festivals, multi racial neighborhoods and forced tolerance
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