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Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#81

Post by lazylizard »

strogonoff wrote: post #45
Barrin92 wrote: post #37

>For decades, leaders like Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad spoke proudly of Asia's tradition of small, nimble public administration. Yeah, but speaking of it was all they did. Singapore always had an entirely dominant state, they just figured out how to brand themselves correctly. State owned businesses became 'state-linked', regulatory frameworks are 'governmental disruption', and so on. The…

Singapore sounds like a well-branded dictatorship from what I keep hearing, but Japan and South Korea have limited governments that aren’t even allowed to enforce a full lockdown. This is a commonly misreported point—earlier this year I saw The Guardian claim that the reason Japan, SK and China are better at dealing with COVID is because “police visibly enforced lockdown”; two of the three never did! Sure, in Korea a…

just saying. about singapore. a majority actually like what the ruling party is doing on the whole. the ruling party changes its tune to feedback. often times its just slow.

older voters might remember. issues from 2 elections ago. conditions have changed.

maybe 2 elections ago a hot issue was too many foreign workers. maybe 2 elections later businesses are unhappy about the difficulty of employing foreign workers.

my take is. its not so much a dictatorship, especially after lee kuan yew. but its pragmatic. whatever the majority wants, it will try to give.

not so much a dictatorship. but actually populist???

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#82

Post by solidsnack9000 »

yongjik wrote: post #75
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are inferring too much from too short a period of history. Rhee's semi-monarchial military government ended only in 1960. East Asians have long operated a comparatively strong state apparatus, a system borrowed from the Qin that goes back about 2200 years, which many scholars will argue is the first truly bureaucratic state. This is one of the central components of a developed country, and certainly of bi…

I think we might be talking past each other, so let me elaborate a bit: That Rhee's dictatorship ended only in 1960 is precisely my point - he was soon followed by Park Chung-Hee (killed by his own aide on 1979), who was followed by Chun Doo-Hwan (stepped down on 1988). In other words, the memory of dictatorship is still fresh in many South Koreans alive now - unlike America's revolutionary war, this is too recent (a…

How did the size of the government contribute to the problematic transitions you mention; or how did a strong government contribute to their solution?

The idea that a strong government, led by the right people, is a concept that actually leads to a robust system of government would make many Americans politely roll their eyes. We had a long experience with such a system. After we extricated ourselves from it, we had a long experience extricating other countries from such systems.

I hope you'll excuse me for saying so, but there is something profoundly solipsistic and unreasonable about asking me to accept your Korean experience as a basis for a claim as broad as you are making. If that is really the end and the beginning of your chain of reasoning, I urge you to reconsider your approach: we can't, unfortunately, base our understanding of political development on our experience: it's a topic with a long history and a long, long cycle time. A comparative approach, and a willingness to consider like problems and like situations in other countries, nets greater understanding in this area.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#83

Post by Technically »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #68
yongjik wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet American colonists hanged witches all the same, and slavery persisted for much longer than in European kingdoms those colonists had fled from. Seems like the correct lesson to draw is that the size or power of government doesn't necessarily tell you how much systematic misery and injustice you will find there.

I worry about responses like yours because they are based on an impressionistic and ultimately incorrect understanding of western history. This way of approaching our history is frequently used in what is effectively woke propaganda, as well as propaganda in support of Chinese authoritarian style government. Regarding your claims specifically: Americans did not hang witches "all the time". Prosecutions for sorcery an…

[dead]

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#84

Post by yongjik »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #82
yongjik wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we might be talking past each other, so let me elaborate a bit: That Rhee's dictatorship ended only in 1960 is precisely my point - he was soon followed by Park Chung-Hee (killed by his own aide on 1979), who was followed by Chun Doo-Hwan (stepped down on 1988). In other words, the memory of dictatorship is still fresh in many South Koreans alive now - unlike America's revolutionary war, this is too recent (a…

How did the size of the government contribute to the problematic transitions you mention; or how did a strong government contribute to their solution? The idea that a strong government, led by the right people, is a concept that actually leads to a robust system of government would make many Americans politely roll their eyes. We had a long experience with such a system. After we extricated ourselves from it, we had…

> We had a long experience with such a system.

No, your ancestors had experience with such a system. They are long dead, and the struggles they faced and lessons they learned have been abstracted and bowdlerized until all we're left with is a parable against the abstract idea of a dictator.

George Washington wasn't fighting an abstract dictator. He was fighting the British Empire, an actual existing enemy with an actual ruler, with millions of people on every sides who either supported or fought against it for their own reasons. I can't even pretend to understand the issues they faced, but I do know that you cannot summarize them into a single factor.

Consider a much simpler event, like 9/11. If anyone says, "There's one reason why 9/11 happened, which is X - this is why we must never do X ever again," how much would you trust such an analysis?

That's all I'm saying. My Korean experience tells me that anyone who says it can be reduced to a single factor, or even a major factor (the size of the government), is selling snake oil. Of course, that doesn't mean I know a universal solution to avoid tyranny. If there was such a solution, mankind didn't discover it yet.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#85

Post by rasz »

strogonoff wrote: post #71
rasz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/asia/south-ko... tldr its a shitshow

Jailing corrupt officials is? What’s your argument—that a president must be able to act illegally and then walk free?

The continued legacy of corruption and running the place like your own little kingdom by pretty much every single leader since forever. Clearly jailing (and subsequent pardons) dont work if nothing changed in last 60 years).

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#86

Post by rasz »

dismantlethesun wrote: post #62
rangibaby wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's too much power" What’s enough power? A government-mandated lockdown is legally impossible in Japan but they have managed to keep COVID cases within a number that can be handled by their medical system.

I feel that if you're an island like Japan, Singapore, or New Zealand, or effectively isolated like Korea (3 sea borders + 1 land border which is permanently closed, and land-mined) then maybe the amount of power your government has isn't the key factor in keeping your country safe from a pandemic. The procedures used in NYC aren't drastically different from Singapores', but the key difference is that Manhattan canno…

>The procedures used in NYC aren't drastically different from Singapores'

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-de...

'A state directive sent thousands of Covid-19 patients into nursing homes'

yep, no difference at all

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#87

Post by strogonoff »

rasz wrote: post #85
strogonoff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jailing corrupt officials is? What’s your argument—that a president must be able to act illegally and then walk free?

The continued legacy of corruption and running the place like your own little kingdom by pretty much every single leader since forever. Clearly jailing (and subsequent pardons) dont work if nothing changed in last 60 years).

Those are two orthogonal things though: 1) electing people who consistently act in good faith, and 2) noticing, acknowledging and prosecuting if elected authorities act in bad faith.

(1) is a known hard problem in a democracy. The democracy in Korea is young as you have noted and there are cultural holdovers from previous times, so perhaps having (2) happen N times first is the only way forward—otherwise all they’d get is an illusion.

Where (2) is not implemented, (1) is less likely to happen (no deterrent). If (2) is implemented and citizens learn to elect better and keep trying, (1) may happen at some point.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#88

Post by brnt »

Cookingboy wrote: post #41
yongjik wrote: post #30

As a South Korean, I'm not sure covid has much to do with acceptance of "big government." Unlike most of the West, many Asians have lived under real dictators - some still do. We know what a dictatorship looks like, and we know how terrible your life can be when the government abandons its duty to protect people. To put it other way, "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's to…

I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job. I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's a catchy saying, but…

Altough marketed differently, America was founded by wealthy landowners who wanted to pay fewer taxes to uphold some empire.

If you look at who's funding today's misinformation outfits, you'll find characters from a similar background: libertarian corporatists who implicitly believe a dollar is one vote.

It's not hard to see the continuity and how the marketing works: worship of the entrepreneur, hard work, superstarism. Leading naturally into calls for small government, temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome, defining fairness along lines of economic success, etc.

It's a shame we're so unaware of the marketing. It's actually not very difficult to poke through. I think the fact that so many early settlers came for religious reasons (their home states in Europe didn't look kindly on their fundamentalism and fanaticism) set the tone in terms of a people that so easily believes in stories.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#89

Post by shadowprofile77 »

EliRivers wrote: post #54
shadowprofile77 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is questionable logic, the last statement I mean. The Black Death killed nearly half the total population of Europe across all age groups (in some regions and whole cities, it even wiped out 70% or more of their inhabitants. That level of life destruction creates an immense, definitive shortage of labor for the urgent needs of a devastated society. The 1918 pandemic killed tens of millions, but proportio…

I understand there's a pretty solid consensus that it did. In some places, serfdom effectively ended. But we don't have to guess. We can just look it up and find that people who know a lot more about it than us have come to those conclusions.

I think you misunderstood my previous comment. I don't at all question that the Black Death ended serfdom, or at least weakened it severely after so many dead. As I stated, I was questioning the application of this same chain of events and logic to the 1918 pandemic, for the population proportion reasons I already mentioned above.

Re: Covid pushes Asia to embrace big government

#90

Post by krageon »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #82
yongjik wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we might be talking past each other, so let me elaborate a bit: That Rhee's dictatorship ended only in 1960 is precisely my point - he was soon followed by Park Chung-Hee (killed by his own aide on 1979), who was followed by Chun Doo-Hwan (stepped down on 1988). In other words, the memory of dictatorship is still fresh in many South Koreans alive now - unlike America's revolutionary war, this is too recent (a…

How did the size of the government contribute to the problematic transitions you mention; or how did a strong government contribute to their solution? The idea that a strong government, led by the right people, is a concept that actually leads to a robust system of government would make many Americans politely roll their eyes. We had a long experience with such a system. After we extricated ourselves from it, we had…

> we had a long experience extricating other countries from such systems

Imperialistically rolling into some country that you want to exploit for financial gain is not something to boast about.

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