Thread

1. laybak · 1790806804 · focus · HN ↗

   the Singaporean government is often described as having a "parental" approach. I guess this move would be on brand

   1. vovavili · 1790809717 · focus · HN ↗

      It's also known as being one of the very few countries actually capable of using state capacity to overcome serious social and economic problems. Godspeed.

      1. oatmeal1 · 1790810135 · focus · HN ↗

         It's basically a benevolent dictatorship due to one party being in charge for the last 67 years.

         1. PorciiVorbesc · 1790810214 · focus · HN ↗

            Sometimes a benevolent dictatorship is better than a perverted and corrupt democracy. Democracy isn't the perfect be-all and end-all form of governance that will work well for everyone, a fact even ancient greeks recognized. Letting the masses decide the future of a country just because they're the majority is like letting the passengers fly the plane because they outnumber the crew.

            While many countries in the west have a two or multi party system due to historical reasons, on certain issues they often just function as controlled opposition, making your vote worthless anyway, with political battles between parties now being mostly and ideological circus to keep the unwashed masses distracted and divided while they get robbed blind, rather than focused on actually fixing things for the working class.

            If Singapore can skip this expensive time consuming circus and just get shit done, then good for them, but I don't want our western leaders to take the wrong lesson and move us to a dictatorship as the promised solution to fix things, which is what I feel they're trying.

            1. missedthecue · 1790812949 · focus · HN ↗

               Benevolent dictatorship is probably always the best form of government. I would even say a benevolent dictatorship is superior to a functioning democracy. The main (and unsolvable) issue is that there is no reliable mechanism to ensure they are and that they stay benevolent.

               1. PorciiVorbesc · 1790865997 · focus · HN ↗

                  >I would even say a benevolent dictatorship is superior to a functioning democracy. The main (and unsolvable) issue is that there is no reliable mechanism to ensure they are and that they stay benevolent.

                  All true, but consider that most democracies today aren't really functional anymore. They impose more and more draconical surveillance and speech laws while failing to at providing livable economic condition to the next generations.

            2. matrix87 · 1790832976 · focus · HN ↗

               Corporations could just do the same thing. Henry Ford historically had doubled people's salary to get them to have families. This was contingent on a bunch of paternalistic rules and inspections (like participants weren't allowed to drink for example).

               From an organizational perspective, really cunning managers understand this: if your reports have kids, they probably aren't going to job hop for more money or better work. It gives significant leverage over employees.

               So I don't see why the public sector would need to do this, either the public or private sector could do it. If you lump the US government in with the corporations as two agents which punch down, life in the US could actually be seen as more oppressive than other places. It really depends. The US could accomplish a relatively totalitarian end result with the same form of government just by creating a couple strong economic incentives for corporations. Generally the US govt in its current form prefers delegation to the private sector

               1. PorciiVorbesc · 1790891683 · focus · HN ↗

                  >Henry Ford historically had doubled people's salary to get them to have families.

                  Ford was the only major mass produced car company of its day. The global economy of today is way different than the one Heny Fordo operated in.

            3. CM30 · 1790850636 · focus · HN ↗

               The issue is that it's very rare that a 'benevolent' dictatorship stays benevolent. There are plenty of examples through history where a good leader (either hereditary, elected or promoted through other means) did well for decades, only to see their efforts undone by an idiot or tyrant that came afterwards.

               Also doesn't help that the people who most want power are those least deserving of it. See many CEOs, and many politicians in general.

               Does Singapore work well so far? Sure, by some definitions of working well. Same with China.

               But it definitely feels like they're rolling the dice with their systems of governance, and hoping the next leader is someone that actually cares about the health of society rather than a would be authoritarian ruler.

         2. vovavili · 1790810413 · focus · HN ↗

            Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him.

            1. outside1234 · 1790811548 · focus · HN ↗

               The Singaporean president gets paid USD$2M a year.

               1. baggy_trough · 1790814652 · focus · HN ↗

                  Well worth it so far.
               2. rchaud · 1790823436 · focus · HN ↗

                  small price to pay to circumvent being bought off by big business at every possible opportunity.
         3. bijowo1676 · 1790811205 · focus · HN ↗

            Singapore is the case when you can just rely on your government to do its job and they will do the job properly!!!!

            Can't remember when it was last time you could rely on western government to do the right thing

         4. jb1991 · 1790811469 · focus · HN ↗

            Not just one party, but one family.

            1. motionlessveloc · 1790814505 · focus · HN ↗

               The current prime minister is unrelated to the Lee family, and none of the third generation Lees seem particularly interested in politics.

               1. jb1991 · 1790818121 · focus · HN ↗

                  Sounds like a step in the right direction, then.
         5. Der_Einzige · 1790817827 · focus · HN ↗

            Hardly benevolent. I'll take every social problem America has 10x to avoid being an extremely boring "utopia" like Singapore.

            It's literally the antithesis of "cool", whatever your definition. The most square people on earth.

      2. Barrin92 · 1790811203 · focus · HN ↗

         the kind of issues that Singapore has been fairly effective at, getting people to speak the same tongue or not spitting on the street, what you could put into a bucket of 'public discipline' measures I think is over-romanticized.

         The country has been effective at it but so was Prussia or England. Singapore has increasingly complex social issues you aren't going to solve with a cane, and government organized marriage likely will go as well as government cheese

         1. vovavili · 1790812807 · focus · HN ↗

            It has achieved the highest global GDP per capita is just a couple dozen of years, starting as a small bit of swamp forcibly kicked out Malaysia. I think it's unfair to say that people are over-romanticizing these sorts of accomplishments.

            1. motionlessveloc · 1790814644 · focus · HN ↗

               Starting out at the second richest city in Asia after Shanghai, you mean.

               The PAP likes its "fishing village in a swamp" trope, and post-war Singapore certainly had its share of problems, but it was already a wealthy trading entrepot long before Lee Kuan Yew came along.

               1. vovavili · 1790848142 · focus · HN ↗

                  Let's put it this way.

                  Singapore started from an unusually favorable, but still genuinely troubled, Asian starting position. Their government then proceeded to get a remarkable number of important things right, and turned it into one of the richest countries in the world. That achievement does not require pretending Singapore was a fishing village in a swamp in 1965. The more accurate story is impressive enough on its own: plenty of countries and cities with comparable or better initial advantages failed to achieve anything close to Singapore's subsequent trajectory. Look at how Western former great powers are doing, or even closer countries like Japan.

                  I'd argue the way Singapore uses state capacity deserves substantial credit for that.

      3. jb1991 · 1790811593 · focus · HN ↗

         It's also known as being one of the very few first-world countries actually without basic freedoms, like free speech, freedom of the press, etc.

         1. JumpCrisscross · 1790811765 · focus · HN ↗

            > basic freedoms, like free speech, freedom of the press, etc.

            How is that going for us in the west?

            Like, I believe in these rights. But I also think we should be open to questioning them when we’ve got anti-vaxxers and Holocaust deniers finding popular purchase among an increasingly and proudly illiterate population.

            1. jb1991 · 1790812272 · focus · HN ↗

               The net effect is ultimately positive. Societies are healthier in many ways when people are free to speak their mind.

               1. JumpCrisscross · 1790823617 · focus · HN ↗

                  > net effect is ultimately positive. Societies are healthier in many ways when people are free to speak their mind

                  This is currently not empirically sustained. I hope it will be, in the long run. But if Americans and Europeans keep voting for far-right and -left wing idiots, and China and its similars take the mantle of technological and scientific development, there is a real argument that Enlightenment values don’t apply perfectly in a world with social media and AI.

            2. jb1991 · 1790812388 · focus · HN ↗

               Humans are messy but long-term nothing good has ever come from repression.
            3. alex43578 · 1790812422 · focus · HN ↗

               The stupidity of some shouldn't be an argument against the rights of everyone.

               1. jacquesm · 1790818289 · focus · HN ↗

                  Until the stupid are in the majority and start curbing your rights. That's one of the main problems with freedom of speech and with democracy as well: they both contain the seeds of their own undoing.
               2. JumpCrisscross · 1790823513 · focus · HN ↗

                  Why not? If every society that embraces a right fails in a similar way, that right should be open to being debated. In a world with social media, I’m not convinced American First-Amendment style (in its ideal form) free speech is as unquestionably good as I once thought it was.

                  1. jb1991 · 1790824488 · focus · HN ↗

                     > If every society that embraces a right fails in a similar way

                     which societies, which failures, which "every" are you referring to, exactly?

                     1. JumpCrisscross · 1790840282 · focus · HN ↗

                        > which societies, which failures, which "every" are you referring to, exactly?

                        I'd argue American society is currently failing. We're losing wars. We're racking up debt. We're destroying our institutions. A decent fraction of the population not only expects civil war, but cheers it on.

                        Meanwhile, in Europe, a similar vein is consistently emerging across the continent. It's done better at resisting. But in part through policing speech.

                        1. alex43578 · 1790844645 · focus · HN ↗

                           Do you think Europe is being successful by those metrics?

                           They're racking up debt too, with worse means to pay it back, they've destroyed both their institutions and their culture via mass migration of unskilled and dissimilar peoples, and they couldn't even fight a war because they can't field the firepower of one US state's national guard base (much less "lose" it, in the ways that people mischaracterize the US's recent conflicts).

                           Europe is a distant third in an increasingly multipolar world that will be shaped by the US and China, reliant on the US's increasingly fickle protection from Russia; aging, fading, and losing identity. Their core industries like automotive have already lost to China, their power costs are skyrocketing, their technology (outside of some gifts from the US like ASML) lags the US across the frontiers, and there is deep divides across the continent.

                           But hey, at least they are protected from misgendering a "woman" with a beard or mentioning the identity of a criminal.

         2. broodbucket · 1790812290 · focus · HN ↗

            Australia doesn't have those either, despite many people assuming we do (including most people who live here).

            1. Der_Einzige · 1790817914 · focus · HN ↗

               Australia, New Zealand, and the UK are all competing with each other on who can be the most authoritarian anglo nation. "Oi, you got a loicense for that opinion M8?"

               1. broodbucket · 1790820447 · focus · HN ↗

                  The UK are at least vaguely equal opportunity authoritarians, and their police will arrest both the angry dad posting on Facebook about immigrants and the pensioner peacefully protesting in support of Palestine all the same
            2. aprilthird2021 · 1790831752 · focus · HN ↗

               They have much more than Singapore tbh
         3. rahimnathwani · 1790817400 · focus · HN ↗

            UK? France? Germany?

            1. jb1991 · 1790817629 · focus · HN ↗

               France has a constitutional right to free speech since at least the 18th century, not sure what you mean. There is a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which is still part of France's constitution. France is also bound by the EU Convention on Human Rights. Why would you compare France to Singapore in this regard? That's strange.

               1. rahimnathwani · 1790818260 · focus · HN ↗

                  Google any of these terms to see examples of people who were actually fined for speech in France, after 1950, and well after the 18th century:

                  - Hervé Eon Sarkozy fine

                  - Éric Zemmour 3000 fine

                  - bardot degenerates 20000

                  - Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly fine

                  None of these were threats or incitement to violence. Just insults.

                  And you talk about a constitutional right to free speech since the 18th century, but mocking Catholicism could be prosecuted until 1881 (i.e. in the 19th century).

                  1. jb1991 · 1790824422 · focus · HN ↗

                     it's perhaps debatable, but the European (and French) legal frameworks do not recognize hate speech as protected free speech, so I suppose the concern (e.g. in the Bardot case) is if it was hate speech or not. Americans also do not support hate speech, though perhaps the way these are handled legally are different. I don't think this kind of exception is fairly applied to discredit what I wrote.

                     1. rahimnathwani · 1790825299 · focus · HN ↗

                        I said France does not have free speech, and gave an example of someone who was fined for holding up a small sign with the words "Casse-toi, pov'con" ("Get lost, you sad jerk").

                        If someone in France is not free to hold a sign that says "Get lost, you sad jerk" then France does not have free speech. That sign contains only words. It does not create any threat. It does not incite anyone to take illegal and/or violent actions.

                        You say "I don't think this kind of exception is fairly applied to discredit what I wrote" but I'm having trouble following your reasoning.

      4. doctorpangloss · 1790915787 · focus · HN ↗

         how would you know? it's not a free country, there's no free press. they perform poorly on stuff you cannot fake, like birth rate.

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