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Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

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Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#211

Post by rbg246 »

stagehn wrote: post #206
threeseed wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Melbourne and her arrest is widely supported. Our city is in a severe lockdown and at a tipping point between New Zealand style suppression and US style chaos. Just because she is a white, pregnant woman does not mean that she has the right to break the law and compromise the safety of the community.

What does her being white have to do with anything and why would you even bring up her race?

Because the reaction to her arrest is a good example of white lady in distress.

Whether you agree or disagree with her arrest and release like two hours after this sort of stuff happens all the time with police but it's a big deal if it's a white lady.

Just for the record im not sure I agree with her arrest but you know... Bigger things to worry about

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#212

Post by hatenberg »

ZephyrP wrote: post #174
CyberDildonics wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore is not a democracy. They have sham elections where the opposition party is only allowed to have media coverage by the single state run media channel for three weeks before the election. If your neighborhood votes for the opposition party you lose funding for things like public transportation. Lee Kuan Yew lives in a giant, gated, guarded compound in the middle of the most valuable real estate in the city. A…

>> Lee Kuan Yew lives in a giant, gated, guarded compound in the middle of the most valuable real estate in the city Didn't he die the better part of a decade ago?

Its also super disingenuous

LKY lived in a rather small house.

The current president tried to continue living in her HDB (public housing) after taking office but gave up on advice of security and complaints from neighbours about said security.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#213

Post by stagehn »

rbg246 wrote: post #211
stagehn wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does her being white have to do with anything and why would you even bring up her race?

Because the reaction to her arrest is a good example of white lady in distress. Whether you agree or disagree with her arrest and release like two hours after this sort of stuff happens all the time with police but it's a big deal if it's a white lady. Just for the record im not sure I agree with her arrest but you know... Bigger things to worry about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

Is "wide support" of her arrest (as framed by the person I was replying to) an example of white lady in distress? That seems like the exact opposite of white lady in distress. Or is the single person who thought the arrest was unjust (further up) an example of white lady in distress?

None of this fits the white lady in distress definition. It just seems like a way to smuggle in anti-white racism for no particular reason. Nothing about this situation has to do with race in any way whatsoever.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#214

Post by zhdc1 »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #34
accurrent wrote: post #3

Disagree on calling Suzhou Industrial Park a failure. I grew up there and can say that while it may not have attracted the desired profit levels it certainly did have miraculous effect on the people of Suzhou. Wages have sky rocketed (as has property price). It may not have been profitable within 5 years, more than 400 fortune 500 companies had their factories located there in 2014. Suzhou went from a city with two b…

According to some Westerners there is only one road that leads to prosperity. Only Western culture and Western philosophy matters. Blame that Fukuyama- who by the way already backpedaled in the face of real history lol.

Compare and contrast with the latter part of Yergin & Stanislaw's The Commanding Heights, which goes into detail on the American origins of China's economic policy.

Huntington's The Third Wave also applies, since China looks about the same as a lot of other economically developing countries in the mid-late 20th century, including a lot of 'democracies' that were de facto single party states.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#215

Post by rbg246 »

stagehn wrote: post #213
rbg246 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the reaction to her arrest is a good example of white lady in distress. Whether you agree or disagree with her arrest and release like two hours after this sort of stuff happens all the time with police but it's a big deal if it's a white lady. Just for the record im not sure I agree with her arrest but you know... Bigger things to worry about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

Is "wide support" of her arrest (as framed by the person I was replying to) an example of white lady in distress? That seems like the exact opposite of white lady in distress. Or is the single person who thought the arrest was unjust (further up) an example of white lady in distress? None of this fits the white lady in distress definition. It just seems like a way to smuggle in anti-white racism for no particular rea…

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.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#216

Post by zhdc1 »

michaelscott wrote: post #11
danielheath wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta say, housing is one good that the free market seems to not really be amazing at. Here in Australia, it has become an investment vehicle; a huge amount of housing stock is empty while a third of the population are living in very poor accommodation.

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 housing needs to be overly regulated when it only takes one-two years (or less) to build new capacity once you remove all of the unnecessary red tape.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#217

Post by melbourne_mat »

ekianjo wrote: post #191
melbourne_mat wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal of course but there are stories of foreign workers being promised one thing then receiving something else when they get there. It's difficult to complain when you can be sent home for doing so. This kind of employment arrangement which is very open to exploitation is not unique to Singapore. Where I live there are similar programs for foreign farm workers and the are also stories if exploitation. However th…

> Anecdotal of course but there are stories of foreign workers being promised one thing then receiving something else when they get there. It's difficult to complain when you can be sent home for doing so. It's possible but very unlikely to be a problem over the long run with the means of communication nowadays. Everyone (even poor people) have access to mobile phones and can warn their peers/friends/communities if t…

Honestly I don't know any issue in the real world that has been solved this way. Just because much of the world has a mobile phone doesn't mean they are getting the right information at the right time.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#218

Post by stagehn »

rbg246 wrote: post #215
stagehn wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "wide support" of her arrest (as framed by the person I was replying to) an example of white lady in distress? That seems like the exact opposite of white lady in distress. Or is the single person who thought the arrest was unjust (further up) an example of white lady in distress? None of this fits the white lady in distress definition. It just seems like a way to smuggle in anti-white racism for no particular rea…

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 arrest came first so it was more novel and thus more engaging from a clicks perspective.

It's absurd that race is being brought into this as a relevant explanatory dimension. Pernicious and divisive to say the least, leaving aside the fact that there's no evidence that race is in any way relevant to either what occurred in this case or the coverage of the case

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#219

Post by AniseAbyss »

leafboi wrote: post #116
wenc wrote: post #93

Wow. This article is one of the most compelling I've read in a while. There's even a bit in there about models and reality with respect to (authoritarian) governance and size, and why simplistic schemata suffer from large errors in larger states: "Decision-makers must rely on simplified models to make their decisions. All schemata are by nature imperfect representations of reality. Indeed, a scheme that reflected rea…

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.

Re: Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore

#220

Post by hellofunk »

bllguo wrote: post #147
hellofunk wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat of a naive view -- the risks of any kind of dictatorship far outweigh any slight chance of good.

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.
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