Lee Kuan Yew -Americas elites are eulogizing a tyrant

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Mandy Thompson: Dec 26, 2014; by zen death robot

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/31/lee...dium=socialflow

Found this opinion piece in Salon, I don't think that its an accident that our leaders honor and shed tears for dead third world tyrants like this guy and the King of Saudi Arabia

quote:

Lee Kuan Yew is finally dead � and America�s elites are eulogizing a tyrant and psychological monster
Lee Kuan Yew made Singapore wealthy & kept people in line with barbaric fear. Clinton & Kissinger should be ashamed

It would be difficult to match Boris Yeltsin, the drunkard who turned tanks on Russia�s post-Soviet democracy, for the effusions of twaddle he elicited among American policy people, pundits, scholars and correspondents. But in death as in life, Lee Kuan Yew is up there�no, down there�with the worst of the autocrats.

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Singapore�s long-reigning dictator died of pneumonia at 91 last week and was buried after a state funeral Sunday. And you could set your watch by the old, faithful geyser of praise that gushed for the master-builder of Southeast Asia�s most efficient police state. It erupted more or less instantly in all the predictable quarters.

At the Council on Foreign Relations he was �the sage of Singapore.� The New York Times, in an editorial last Tuesday, had him down as �a towering figure on the global stage.� For President Obama, LKY was �a true giant of history.� Prominently in attendance in Singapore Sunday were Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger.

Lee Kuan Yew is dead, long live Lee Kuan Yew. This is the gist of it all. And this is why we should pay attention to all the bunkum. For ruling cliques in Washington and across the Western world, Lee was an exquisite example of the developing-nation leader who gets the dirty work of political repression done with the minimum of embarrassing mess. Therein lay the greatest of Lee�s several gifts�none of which was humane, in my view.

No machine-gun murders in public squares for Lee. No stadiums full of dissidents awaiting their turn to be tortured, no political prisoners thrown into the ocean from helicopters. All of Lee�s opponents kept their fingernails.

I watched Lee up close and very personal for many years, and more about this in a minute. His tactics always reminded me of the guard who beats his charges with a bag of oranges so the organs are ruined but the bruises do not show. In the custody of Lee�s goons, you stood naked in front of an air-conditioner set to max cool while they doused you with ice water all night. You spent your life eating lychee nuts on an outer island while your children grew up without you a ferryboat�s ride away.

Wait a minute, you might say. Are you comparing Lee Kuan Yew with Pinochet or the shah, with Videla and the other colonels in Argentina�with Yeltsin, indeed�and with al-Sisi in Egypt and other such people on the scene now?

Absolutely I am.

The difference between LKY and any other American-backed dictator past or present is a question merely of method and degree. �Soft authoritarianism� or �pragmatic authoritarianism,� the most common euphemisms applied to regimes such as Lee�s, are hair-splits deployed to render them acceptable to our tender sensibilities. They are all on the same dirigiste errand�the installation and maintenance of one form or another of neoliberal corporatism and the corresponding subversion of democratic process.

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I make this point with a certain vigor for a simple reason. We all know Lee�s kind from the Cold War days�the Marcoses and Suhartos and Somozas. But do not drop the guard. Lee�s brand of leadership is precisely what Washington continues to look for across the non-Western world: The policy cliques want Potemkin Village democracies hospitable to American corporations, large CIA stations and, with the true golden boys, a military installation.

Who do you think Ukraine�s new leaders are? President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk are cut from the mold�the one a patently incapable candy-bar salesman and the other a water-bearer for Washington�s neoliberals. Poroshenko�s approval rating, as you have not read in the Times or any other American newspaper, now stands at roughly 30 percent and Yatsenyuk�s at 24 percent. This is because they are now well along in the process of cutting Ukrainian democracy off at its knees, as Yeltsin did during Russia�s 1993 constitutional crisis.

And as Lee did in Singapore in the decades following the island state�s independence, from Britain in 1963 and from Malaysia two years later.

Lee was a Cold War creature, let there be no question�a dependent of the domino theory. He made common cause during the pre-independence days with the Barisan Socialis, the widely supported Socialist Front, against the British. But as a closet autocrat from the first, Lee and his People�s Action Party split with the Socialists soon after he formed his first government (still under British control) in 1959.

Thereafter, Lee turned on the Barisan more ferociously than he had ever opposed the British. From those days forth, the colonial regime�s Internal Security Act�even now not repealed�was the blunt instrument Lee favored above all others.

A pause for full transparency. I was Lee�s victim twice. In 1983 he expelled me for my political coverage as bureau chief of the honorable, now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review. In 2002, Lee�s lawyers accused me of libeling his family and sued Bloomberg News, for whom I was then writing columns.

The first case cost me a harmonious household and a relationship that was supposed to go the distance. In the second, it cost Bloomberg a $450,000 settlement, including assorted fees. Bloomberg editor Matt Winkler apologized wrongly but abjectly, scrubbed the offending column from the archive, and fired me as soon as he was confident nobody was any longer looking.

By the time I arrived in Singapore, in 1981, Lee had intimidated, coerced, blackmailed, imprisoned, co-opted or exiled all but the most quixotic of his political adversaries. I used to visit a doctor named Lee Siew Choh, a Barisan Socialis founder and a veteran of many wars with the prime minister, who kept a quiet practice next to the American embassy. From this Lee, a delightfully bemused old man, I got vitamin B shots and history lessons. Internal security goons followed me to and fro whenever I went to see him.

But the game had changed by then. The bare-knuckles battles with those opposed to an increasingly right-wing regime had given way to the Cold War social contract in effect in every one of Washington East Asian satellites. You, citizen, will get an air conditioner, a refrigerator, a television and maybe a small car and a subsidized apartment. In exchange you will forego your voice and leave all the politics to us.

�Shut up and change the channel� was my shorthand for this arrangement when visitors came. This is how the Cold War was fought in East Asia and it held for decades�utterly cynical but never any surprise in cultures of poverty.

Lee�s Singapore was an especially interesting case. Having demolished any semblance of independent labor unions, put the press on a very short leash and commandeered education to turn out graduates the way GM turns out parts, the task was psychological�how to keep an increasingly affluent elite in line when they grew restless with the bribe at the heart of it all.

The preferred instrument was a kind of totalized fear by the time I took up residence. The PAP, the ruling party then as now, thought nothing of ruining careers in business, politics or any other sphere. Nothing was infra-dig, and everyone had their stories. I knew a senior labor official who went silent when police detectives tailed him and then threatened to inform his wife of his late-night peccadilloes. He had three children and no choice.

No one since Lee�s death has written of his legacy without noting his obsessive grip on his people. It is simply not possible. But all have written of it as justified by the material advances made under Lee�s 40-odd year presence in Singapore politics�as prime minister until 1990, thereafter with titles such as senior minister and minister mentor, Confucian confections to the core.

I have never bought this line.

First, while Singapore�s material progress is beyond question, the argument that democracy and economic advances are mutually exclusive rests on paper-thin logic of the kind Lee did all he could to promote. One finds the damage wrought by this thinking more or less everywhere in Asia.

The true point here cannot be spoken plainly but must be. It is democracy and neoliberal capitalism that cancel one another out. And you cannot ask for a balder example than Singapore: Lee disemboweled political parties and democratic trade unions in large part to make Singapore attractive to foreign investors.

Second, there is the invisible violence noted above. Pervasive fear has produced a society marked by a pathology. At the risk of generality, the Singaporean character is malformed. Realizing one�s humanity with any wholeness is next to impossible. At bottom the condition is one of social psychology.

During my time there I took to calling Singapore Eastern Europe with palm trees until I concluded this may be unfair to Eastern Europeans. I did not say these things altogether unseriously and I do not now. Singapore�s tragedy is that its people allowed one man to humiliate them as deeply within themselves as Lee did. This is the hole they may have a chance to climb out of now. We will have to see.

Lee was never apologetic as to how he ruled, although the boasts sometimes seem to me to ring hollowly. �Nobody doubts that if you take me on I will put on knuckle-dusters and catch you in the cul-de-sac,� Lee said in a 1994 interview with the Times. �If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try.�

And then this from his two-volume memoirs later on: �Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I�m meaningless.�

Think about these statements. Lee was a street-fighter by his own admission�another of his raw gifts�and it was by the rules of the street that he ruled his nation. Is this what they mean when they call him a man of history and a great statesman? I take Lee at his word on this point, nobody else�s: He always came over to me as badly read and pretending otherwise, a poseur in the land of large ideas and a bully whose only principle was winning, the weaker the opponent the better.

As to his point about fear, what kind of person is it whose self-worth rests on how frightened he is able to make other people? My answer comes by way of another question. But to put the conclusion first, an unhealthy person.

A friend asked after reading the obituaries Monday, �Why did he bother with all these campaigns against chewing gum and spitting and making loud noise?� This is not the trivial matter it may seem. It has to do with a failure of self-acceptance.

In my estimation, Lee had a complicated relationship with Westerners since his childhood under British colonial rule and then his university years in Cambridge, where he earned a law degree. It was hatred and love, resentment and envy all at once�common combinations among Asians of Lee�s generation. He wanted to be proud of his Chineseness, but the only way he knew how was to make the Chinese as much like Westerners as he could.

Westerners, in turn, tended to love Lee in an interesting pattern. Powerful political leaders and business executives�presidents, foreign ministers, CEOs, senior editors at business magazines�held him in high regard. All others viewed him with more detachment for what he was. Why was this?

Having learned his lessons from the Communists active in Southeast Asia during his younger years, Lee structured the PAP as a Leninist party, led by vanguard cadres who were never identified. The powerful among foreigners appreciated this because the party got things done quickly and cleanly. The less-powerful understood the consequences of an organization�s guiding belief that the end justified any means to it.

A fitting coda to the life of LKY arrived over the weekend. One Amos Yee, a 17-year-old Singaporean, posted a YouTube video titled �Lee Kuan Yew Is Finally Dead.� In it Yee dressed down the great statesman as power-hungry, malicious, and deceptive, �a horrible person because everyone is afraid that if they say something they will get in trouble.�

Yee was reported to the police by a fellow student Saturday and by Sunday the video segment was erased and Yee was under arrest. Under Singapore�s penal code he could face three years� imprisonment if the case goes to trial.

�Lee was a dictator but managed to fool most of the world into thinking he was democratic� by granting Singaporeans the opportunity to vote to make it seem like we have freedom of choice,� the video concluded. Well said, Amos. Be brave, and you will have an easier time looking yourself in the mirror, even if it is on an outer island.

The mounds of praise heaped atop Lee Kuan Yew now rely upon distance for their credibility. We, far away, cannot see easily into the man and the nation he shaped. Draw a little closer. As you look, recognize that this is a man and a nation the cliques in Washington wish the whole of the developing world would emulate.

Then ask yourself a couple of questions. Am I supposed to think it is well and good for people to be ruled by fear? Is Lee Kuan Yew the sum total of our aspirations for the world�s emerging societies? He is our 21st century ideal made flesh?

Not mine by a long way.

Patrick Smith is the author of �Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century.� He was the International Herald Tribune�s bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote �Letter from Tokyo� for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @thefloutist.

It really bugs me how Washington has long had this abominable amoral subculture of the most powerful people in the world that promote and prop up these assholes in developing countries. Freedom is good for domestic consumption but when it comes to international markets: death squads, disappearances, arbitrary arrests, assasinating union organizers are all given the thumbs up by "very serious people" - people more concerned with being mainstream than being right.

Ethics tells us we should not act in a way that we would not will everyone else in the world to act. Hypocrisy is white washed as pragmatism but there is nothing pragmatic about it. What it is is selfishness. They aren't seek a solution that is best for everyone, they are brazenly violating common sense moral rules to enrich and empower themselves. The people they should be shedding tears for are people fighting for the people on the ground getting killed.

In other news: http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts-crime/story/police-arrest-amos-yee-the-teen-behind-anti-lee-kuan-yew-video-201

Amos Yee, who made insensitive remarks on Christianity in video, arrested
SINGAPORE - The 17-year-old teenager who made insensitive remarks about Christianity in a YouTube video against Mr Lee Kuan Yew was arrested on Sunday.

In the video posted last week, he celebrated Singapore's founding Prime Minister's death and criticised his political career.

He also challenged Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to sue him.

At least 20 police reports have been lodged against Amos Yee since March 27, when he was believed to have uploaded the eight-minute video.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 04:40

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 11:44

Lord Windy: Mar 26, 2010

Didn't he preside over the turning of Singapore from third world to first world? Seems like something that should be praised.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 07:12

GhostofJohnMuir: Aug 14, 2014; anime is not good

As someone who likes to spit in public I consider him histories greatest monster.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 07:14

ReindeerF: Apr 20, 2002; Rubber Dinghy Rapids Bro

"this guy and the King of Saudi Arabia"

Let us discuss other monsters of history, such as Fidel Castro and Hitler or maybe Charles DeGaulle and Idi Amin. Mahathir and Pol Pot, anyone?

# ? Apr 1, 2015 07:31

America Inc.: Nov 22, 2013; I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even 500 would be pretty nice.

The Article posted:

Clinton & Kissinger should be ashamed

I don't think Kissinger was programmed for shame

# ? Apr 1, 2015 07:33

Goatse James Bond: Mar 28, 2010; If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

ReindeerF posted:

"this guy and the King of Saudi Arabia"

Let us discuss other monsters of history, such as Fidel Castro and Hitler or maybe Charles DeGaulle and Idi Amin. Mahathir and Pol Pot, anyone?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Genghis Khan.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 07:35

drilldo squirt: Aug 18, 2006; a beautiful, soft meat sack; Clapping Larry

GhostofJohnMuir posted:

As someone who likes to spit in public I consider him histories greatest monster.

You're gross, dude.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 07:45

Quasimango: Mar 10, 2011; God damn you.

quote:

It really bugs me how Washington has long had this abominable amoral subculture of the most powerful people in the world that promote and prop up these assholes in developing countries

Oh for goodness sake, not every world leader is "propped up" by Washington, stop being so arrogant.

Also,

quote:

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# ? Apr 1, 2015 07:50

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

quote:

My early experience in Singapore and Malaya shaped my views about the claim of the press to be the defender of truth and freedom of speech. The freedom of the press was the freedom of its owners to advance their personal and class interests.

from his autobio, "Managing the Media", in From Third World to First: The Singapore Story

This attitude started out with a deep antipathy toward ethnic communal newspapers, the Utusan Malaysia (Malaysian Courier), Nanyang Siang Pau (South China Sea Business Newspaper), and so forth.

The later sense that European journalists would enter Singapore in a colonialist expectation of being able to use Singapore as a battleground for their domestic disputes back home - Singapore itself be damned - only exploded in the 1970s, when Singapore's new government reacted badly to pressures from the New Left in Europe.

The PAP itself identified with the anticolonial project of the old postwar left in the Labour Party and regarded this as betrayal, more or less. The attitude of the PAP was that its cooperation with British military and economic interests (e.g., trusting in British promises of non-devaluation of the sterling, and then meekly accepting massive losses when Britain devalued anyway) meant that its British allies - the Labour government under Harold Wilson - would correspondingly carry out the withdrawal in a manner that would not compromise Singapore's military and economic interests. Obviously, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson, and Heath themselves were under very different and rapidly-evolving domestic political pressures. The attitude in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur was that postcolonial leaders had been asked to keep their radicals in line at considerable personal risk, but their supposed allies back in London were unwilling to do the same.

ronya fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Apr 1, 2015

# ? Apr 1, 2015 09:09

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Lord Windy posted:

Didn't he preside over the turning of Singapore from third world to first world? Seems like something that should be praised.

He wasn't anti-American enough so clearly not

# ? Apr 1, 2015 10:15

Byolante: Mar 23, 2008; by Cyrano4747

Man at Salon who Libled and was ejected from singapore for attacking Lee Kuan Yew writes angry piece about Lee Kuan Yew. Next up man shouts at cloud.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 10:36

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Lord Windy posted:

Didn't he preside over the turning of Singapore from third world to first world? Seems like something that should be praised.

Quasimango posted:

Oh for goodness sake, not every world leader is "propped up" by Washington, stop being so arrogant.

Also,

Typo posted:

He wasn't anti-American enough so clearly not

Byolante posted:

Man at Salon who Libled and was ejected from singapore for attacking Lee Kuan Yew writes angry piece about Lee Kuan Yew. Next up man shouts at cloud.

For obscene comments and insulting the religious/political feelings of a person, you are all placed under arrest.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:13

Numlock: May 19, 2007; The simplest seppo on the forums

History always forgives Tyrants if they build and or accomplish something notable.

As far as I know he didn't fill a bunch of mass graves or invade any other countries so by tyrant standards Lee Kuan Yew was pretty benign.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:33

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Numlock posted:

History always forgives Tyrants if they build and or accomplish something notable.

As far as I know he didn't fill a bunch of mass graves or invade any other countries so by tyrant standards Lee Kuan Yew was pretty benign.

Truly the ~~Cincinnatus~~ ~~Sulla~~ Octavian of our times

# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:39

Disinterested: Jun 29, 2011; You look like you're still raking it in. Still killing 'em?

blowfish posted:

Truly the ~~Cincinnatus~~ ~~Sulla~~ Octavian of our times

No, you see, these Eastern types prefer order to freedom.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 13:51

P-Mack: Nov 10, 2007

Singapore's libel laws are pretty ridiculous and used as a tool to persecute critics. Pointing that out gets you sued for libel. LOL

# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:13

tsa: Feb 3, 2014

Disinterested posted:

No, you see, these Eastern types prefer order to freedom.

I disagree, look at how well Iraqi democracy is going.

Hopefully we remove Assad too, so Syria can also taste the fresh fruit of democracy.

tsa fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Apr 1, 2015

# ? Apr 1, 2015 14:25

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

P-Mack posted:

Singapore's libel laws are pretty ridiculous and used as a tool to persecute critics. Pointing that out gets you sued for libel. LOL

The most British of colonies.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:14

fuccboi: Jan 5, 2004; by zen death robot

Asia is even BETTER at capitalism than America. Goddamn these guys are great at everything.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:19

Trochanter: Sep 14, 2007; It ain't no sin
to take off your skin, And dance around in your bones!

This piece is a screed, against not only LKY and the West, but Singapore's ruling party.

So, a PAP smear.

Trochanter fucked around with this message at 15:32 on Apr 1, 2015

# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:29

woke wedding drone: Jun 1, 2003; by exmarx; Fun Shoe

Lord Windy posted:

Didn't he preside over the turning of Singapore from third world to first world? Seems like something that should be praised.

Saddam Hussein presided over the modernization of Iraq, doesn't mean he wasn't a dictator.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 15:58

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

ITT: We are PAP

*Owns all the houses, holds elections, evicts areas that voted for the opposition because of the free market. Repeat as necessary to be free and democratic*

It's almost like fascism is the most efficient form of capitalism.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 16:05

Farmer Crack-Ass: Jan 2, 2001; this is me posting irl

How do Singaporeans feel about their government, their political system, and their past?

# ? Apr 1, 2015 16:09

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

Everyone I've met is loving thrilled, they love it. They are also on the wealthier side of the equation so that's what you'd expect.

Personally, I think the relatively benign dictatorship of LKY was fine, he did a lot to forge the country into what it is. In that way, he's a lot like Ataturk. Unlike Ataturk, he didn't set the country up for "Democracy with Turkish Delight", he used a quick placeholder to let his oldest son mature a little bit then ensured power would go to his son. That kind of father-son transition of power is usually a pretty bad thing.

We'll see what happens over the next couple of elections. He's already made some reforms to make Singapore less democratic, escalated legal actions against the opposition and increased election tampering. A lot of the criticism against LKY is using the past to comment on the present.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 16:26

Nckdictator: Sep 8, 2006; Just..someone

The article lost me when it brought up the Ukraine.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 16:34

Soy Division: Aug 12, 2004

Shbobdb posted:

*Owns all the houses, holds elections, evicts areas that voted for the opposition because of the free market. Repeat as necessary to be free and democratic*

Please point me to the mass HDB evictions in Aljunied and Hougang. The worst that happened is some housing upgrades got delayed. It's BS but pork barrel spending getting routed to areas that voted for the ruling party happens in the US too. Especially in big cities.

Do you live in Singapore? I think not.

The author in the OP has obvious (justified) personal animosity against LKY but he clearly has no clue what present day Singapore is like.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 16:51

Soy Division: Aug 12, 2004

Shbobdb posted:

Everyone I've met is loving thrilled, they love it. They are also on the wealthier side of the equation so that's what you'd expect.

I actually live here, and most younger people I know are ambivalent about the PAP (regardless of class background). They respect LKY and the PAP for their achievements but are dissatisfied with the cost of living and limited space for creativity and nonconformity. Older people (especially the white collar ones) tend to be pro-PAP, but that's understandable given that lots of baby boomer Singaporeans went from kampungs with no running water to nice HDB apartments in the duration of a decade or two.

quote:

We'll see what happens over the next couple of elections. He's already made some reforms to make Singapore less democratic, escalated legal actions against the opposition and increased election tampering. A lot of the criticism against LKY is using the past to comment on the present.

I disagree in part. The GRC system may be gerrymandering but the opposition won a GRC in the last election so it clearly isn't foolproof. As for "escalated legal actions against the opposition," in fact leading opposition figures (Chee Soon Juan) are being allowed back into politics and successful professionals are increasingly willing to be candidates for opposition parties.

Almost all people who have been sued recently have been marginal bloggers not affiliated with any organized party and shunned by many opposition members. It's dumb to sue them and just gives them more attention, but the government here isn't exactly state of the art when it comes to PR. And what they said was way less harsh than what random internet commenters say every day without getting arrested.

I'm not aware of any serious election tampering, there was one incident with ballot boxes in 2011 I'm aware of but that's easily chalked up to incompetence and wouldn't have swayed the election regardless.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 17:01

TheBalor: Jun 18, 2001

Shbobdb posted:

Everyone I've met is loving thrilled, they love it. They are also on the wealthier side of the equation so that's what you'd expect.

Personally, I think the relatively benign dictatorship of LKY was fine, he did a lot to forge the country into what it is. In that way, he's a lot like Ataturk. Unlike Ataturk, he didn't set the country up for "Democracy with Turkish Delight", he used a quick placeholder to let his oldest son mature a little bit then ensured power would go to his son. That kind of father-son transition of power is usually a pretty bad thing.

We'll see what happens over the next couple of elections. He's already made some reforms to make Singapore less democratic, escalated legal actions against the opposition and increased election tampering. A lot of the criticism against LKY is using the past to comment on the present.

That's the fly in the ointment of any "benevolent dictator" story. Perhaps it is possible to have a dictator who does more good than harm, by ruthlessly suppressing his opposition but otherwise empowering and enriching his people. These systems lend themselves to nepotism and corruption, though, and way too much is riding on the competence of a person who cannot be easily removed from power. As pretty much every monarchy in history has proven, you won't get lucky with your ruler every time.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 17:03

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

TheBalor posted:

That's the fly in the ointment of any "benevolent dictator" story. Perhaps it is possible to have a dictator who does more good than harm, by ruthlessly suppressing his opposition but otherwise empowering and enriching his people. These systems lend themselves to nepotism and corruption, though, and way too much is riding on the competence of a person who cannot be easily removed from power. As pretty much every monarchy in history has proven, you won't get lucky with your ruler every time.

This. The problem with the "benevolent king/dictator" argument used by authoritarians and authoritarian sympathizers is "what if you don't have a good king?"

# ? Apr 1, 2015 17:05

suck my woke dick: Oct 10, 2012; I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Fojar38 posted:

This. The problem with the "benevolent king/dictator" argument used by authoritarians and authoritarian sympathizers is "what if you don't have a good king?"

~~Have a revolution and replace him with some dumb loudmouth who claims to know better~~ Get shot in the face?

# ? Apr 1, 2015 17:10

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

You are right, I don't live in Singapore, so my information is second hand and not "lived in". I've just heard that the public housing (where most people live) is heavily politicized in a "vote for us or else" kinda was as opposed to a "noblesse oblige" public welfare program. The only people who've mentioned it in that light (n=2) could just be assholes, it wouldn't surprise me. Otherwise it hasn't really come up in a political discussion, so that's all I've got on the issue. Educate me, I'm fascinated by Singapore. It's an exciting melting pot of everything.

Edit: My exposure to Singapore has been through the lens of middle aged businessmen, so that obviously biases my experience.

Shbobdb fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Apr 1, 2015

# ? Apr 1, 2015 17:53

Soy Division: Aug 12, 2004

Shbobdb posted:

You are right, I don't live in Singapore, so my information is second hand and not "lived in". I've just heard that the public housing (where most people live) is heavily politicized in a "vote for us or else" kinda was as opposed to a "noblesse oblige" public welfare program. The only people who've mentioned it in that light (n=2) could just be assholes, it wouldn't surprise me. Otherwise it hasn't really come up in a political discussion, so that's all I've got on the issue. Educate me, I'm fascinated by Singapore. It's an exciting melting pot of everything.

I've heard that in the old days people really did think that you would get evicted from your HDB for supporting the opposition but that never actually happened as far as I know. HDBs are more like government subsidized condos than public housing as we know it in the US and HDB will not repossess your apartment unless you really egregiously violate the rules in some way. Like using your house as a brothel, or an illegal dormitory, or being an absentee landlord without the needed permissions, etc.

Yeah the PAP quite openly says "if your constituency votes opposition your buildings go to the bottom of the list for upgrading" but US urban political machines do the same thing, they're just less explicit about it.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 18:04

Shbobdb: Dec 16, 2010; by Reene

That's probably it, an old rumor. Still a pretty scary rumor, especially when coupled with media control. Is that still something older people are likely to believe or did I just find some holdouts from a bygone era?

# ? Apr 1, 2015 18:11

Soy Division: Aug 12, 2004

Shbobdb posted:

Is that still something older people are likely to believe or did I just find some holdouts from a bygone era?

Yes, people believe all kinds of stuff, side effect of an authoritarian society. The internet has put a lot of new info out there but of course old people are way less likely to use it.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 18:18

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

It's never been noblesse oblige. Public housing in Singapore inherits from British governing elite attitudes toward public housing from the 1920s to 1960s, namely that the point is modernization and progress, and furthermore that for generally-unspecified reasons, the way to modernization and progress lies through extensive public ownership and adherence to long-term central planning.

It's not a house because people, individually speaking, are owed a house with indoor plumbing, it's a house because modernization implies that everyone lives in a house with indoor plumbing. If achieving this goal requires ~~destroying inner London communities~~ destroying old Singapore communities, well, then so be it.

Likewise, public housing upgrades (especially in the form of retrofitted lifts) are popular, as are covered walkways, public exercise areas, multipurpose halls, etc. But it's not done because the state decided that it is owed to residents; rather, it is done because there are budgetary surpluses to be reinvested in the aggregate housing stock. The attitude of the PAP is that the reality of needing to acquire such surpluses should be made as tangible to voters as possible, and second, that this should be done in absolute adherence to the rule of law and the nominally apolitical alignment of the public housing statutory board (the HDB) and the civil-service infrastructure ministry it answers to, and third, that the point of voting is to create an incontestably public mandate toward these ends.

Hence town councils (1988), to begin with. The idea of devolving local services was driven by competing impulses within the PAP: first the idea that younger voters had become disenchanted due to a perceived inability to influence central policy through constituency elections, and second, that younger voters had become detached from the unpleasant costs of maintaining and upgrading public housing. The idea is basically a neoliberal one popularized by Third Way governments elsewhere in the West (although the PAP would never put it in those terms): voters are presented with what seems like participatory democracy, but the participatory body they are voting for has a rigid budget or easily-felt taxes, so voters wind up producing a mandate for a level of local services that is constrained within that budget. In this way, the unpopularity of, e.g., demands for co-payment for lift upgrading would not fall upon Parliament writ large.

This proved insufficient because in practice the HDB continued to have to fund the vast majority of the cost of upgrading; like other political innovations of the era (NMPs, NCMPs, re-empowered People's Associations, etc.) the government has not really been sufficiently interested in the idea to devolve any serious level of funding or power. So in the mid-1990s to 2000s, there was a second wave of innovations to implement essentially the same political calculus: accumulation of surplus funds would be limited in the event of a change of party in the local council*, certain aspects of the upgrading works would be spun off into separate programmes**, and, most infamously, that although all wards would eventually be upgraded, opposition-held wards would be granted the main upgrading funds last***.

* observe that this came to bite the PAP back in the case of Potong Pasir, since the PAP retaking the ward would similarly limit this accumulation. The PAP did not retake the ward until 2011, under Chiam's dubious move of putting his wife in that seat so that he could run in a GRC.
** heavily driven by PAP backbenchers and civil-service concerns about aging populations trumping Kuan Yew's dismissiveness towards Singaporeans demanding that lifts stop at every floor. Note also that the separate programmes require their own housing-block-level polling to produce a 75% mandate amongst Singaporean citizens in that block before upgrading (and co-payments) go ahead, thus duplicating the logic of devolution to the level of physical tower blocks. The polling is religiously carried out although only about 1% of blocks reject upgrading when offered.
*** there was a lot of speculation over whether opposition wards would ever actually receive the funding, but Hougang and Potong Pasir eventually received the funds in 2009. The extent to which this was due to perceived backlash in the 2006 GE, where the (by then) ten-year-old waiting list policy was publicly debated even in the state media, is itself unclear

Gail Wynand is correct in observing that the level of gerrymandering and favoured districts in Singapore is minor compared to what US municipalities and states get up to, but the PAP is unusual in being both explicit about it in rhetoric and legislation, and also adhering to it when the same rules work against them, as in the case of Potong Pasir.

# ? Apr 1, 2015 19:44

Woolie Wool: Jun 2, 2006

I knew the guy was full of poo poo when he used "dirigsme" without knowing what it means, because it sounds scary. Dirigisme is a form of market economics where the state exercises a heavy degree of control, owns entire sectors, and manipulates the markets with regulations and subsidies to guide development according to a central plan. It was used in France during the early years after World War II, and is about as far as you can get from neoliberalism without throwing capitalism away altogether. It certainly wouldn't get you a 0.48 Gini. How do the poor even survive under a Gini that high?

E: well that is some awfully generous public housing...

Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Apr 1, 2015

# ? Apr 1, 2015 23:16

Soy Division: Aug 12, 2004

No, he's right, the locally owned economy is actually very dirigiste, something like 70% of locally owned firms are government linked through the sovereign wealth funds. But they generally (but not always) run the GLCs with a focus on profit. You get the high inequality through normalizing high executive compensation for both private and government officials, and running a financial center that has an explicit policy of maximizing the number of expat billionaire residents.

As for how the poor survive, barely. Hunched over old people collecting scrap to survive are a daily sight. If nothing else they usually (but not always) have a roof over their heads and some modicum of access to decent healthcare.

Soy Division fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Apr 2, 2015

# ? Apr 2, 2015 02:25

ronya: Nov 8, 2010; I'm the normal one.

You hate ridden fucks will regret your words when you eventually grow up.

Peace.

I'm not sure if you are joking, but Singapore does exercise a heavy degree of control, owns entire sectors through its investment arms, and manipulates the markets with regulations and subsidies to guide development according to a central plan.

It is less so today, but Singapore was heavily dirigiste until the mid-1980s:

quote:

In stark contrast to the minimalist policies pursued by the Hong Kong government, in the postwar era the government of Singapore has pursued maximalist policies involving widespread state participation in economic activity financed, in the main, by extensive taxation of labor income. The 1950s and early 1960s were a period of economic stagnation in Singapore, as trade, which was the lifeblood of this entrepot economy, failed to expand. Arguably the stagnation of the 1950s can be attributed to the communist insurgency in Malaysia and the instability caused by racial and anti-British political riots in Singapore. The 1961-1964 development plan actively sought domestic industrialization, erecting trade barriers, providing tax incentives to foreign investors, and initiating a large infrastructure investment program. The early 1960s, however, featured continued political conflict, this time with Singapore's principal trading partners, Malaysia and Indonesia. Consequently, despite the expansion of construction activity, real GDP per capita rose only 2.9% per annum between 1960 and 1965. 1966 witnessed a brief resurgence of trade (as international political relations improved), but in 1967 growth slowed. In July 1967 Britain announced that it would withdraw all of its military forces from Singapore by the mid-1970s. British military bases are believed to have employed, directly and indirectly, 16% of the workforce and accounted for 13-20% of GDP. Meanwhile, Singaporean attempts to industrialize and attract foreign investment drew mixed results, as manufacturing expanded slowly and the giant government-built Jurong Industrial Estate turned into an empty white elephant. Contemporary speeches by Singaporean policymakers convey a palatable sense of desperation.

1968 witnessed a dramatic expansion of direct Singaporean government investment in manufacturing and the economy. The Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) expanded its financial commitments (loans, equity investment, etc.) from S$45 million in July 1968 to S$340 million in December 1970, by which time its holdings of quoted and unquoted shares amounted to 25% of all shareholders funds in the economy. One-third of all financial commitments were in the electrical machinery and petroleum products industries. It is small wonder that between 1968 and 1970, the number of workers in manufacturing increased 60%, with value added in chemical and petroleum products increasing 87% and value added in electrical machinery increasing seven and a half fold!

The early investment commitments of the DBS turn out to have been only the initial steps in the development of a colossal interlocking web of off-budget government corporations and statutory boards. By the early 1980s, the Jurong Town Corporation ran 21 industrial estates and export processing zones (and was building 15 more), while the Housing Development Board housed more than 70% of the population. At this time, the government owned Singapore Airlines, INTRACO (a trading company), Neptune Orient Lines (shipping), Hotel Premier and, in manufacturing, held a 100% or majority equity stake in firms in food, textiles, wood, printing, chemicals and petrochemicals, iron and steel, engineering, and shipbuilding and repair. According to a 1984 Euromoney estimate, state-owned corporations and statutory boards earned profits equal to S$10 to 15 billion, or roughly one-third of GDP. The acquisition and expansion of this vast array of properties has been financed by huge government loans to the statutory boards, which averaged 11.4% of GDP between 1981 and 1985, reaching a high of 16.5% of GDP in 1986. To support its mammoth investment program, the Singaporean government has run prodigious surpluses of current revenue over current expenditure. Total revenue, at some 14% of gross national product (GNP) in 1960, had risen to around a quarter of GNP by 1970, and has remained there ever since. Current expenditure, however, has consistently been less than revenue, averaging, for example, only 58% of the latter during the 1980s. In addition to its own surpluses, the Singaporean government also borrows extensively from the Central Provident Fund. Established in 1955 as a social security program with individualized accounts, the initial contribution rate to the Provident Fund was set at 5% of the employees' salary, with a matching 5% contribution from the employer. By 1975, these rates had been raised to 15%/ 15%, and by 1984 to a rather impressive 25% apiece. Participants may use their fund balances to purchase housing (usually built by the Housing Development Board) or government shares, but, otherwise have a limited ability to withdraw their balances, even upon retirement. As of 1980, fully 95.1% of the Fund was invested in government securities. At peak, in 1985, CPF contributions amounted to a staggering 14.9% of GNP, or 36% of gross national savings.

1968 also witnessed an intensification of efforts to attract foreign investment. Labor legislation passed in that year standardized basic conditions of employment (e.g., hours of work, holidays) and made issues such as promotion, internal transfer, recruitment, retirement, dismissal, and allocation of duties all nonnegotiable managerial prerogatives. All disputes were henceforth subject to compulsory arbitration at the Industrial Arbitration Court, which was required to consider "the interest of the community as a whole." Man-days lost because of industrial stoppages fell from an average of some 40,000 per annum in the mid- 1960s to nil (in all but 2 years) during 1978-1990. Tax incentives for investors have expanded steadily since 1967. Under Pioneer Status, which was actually first introduced in 1959, firms (selected on the basis of capital expenditure and type of technology) are exempted from the 40% profits tax for a period of 5, 10, or more years. Export incentives, introduced in 1967, provide a 90% tax exemption for 5-15 years for export profits derived from sufficiently large investments. In addition, as of the early 1980s, there was an Expansion Incentive (5-year exemption for profits in excess of the preexpansion level for firms investing more than S$10 million in machinery and equipment) and a Warehousing Incentive (5-year 50% tax exemption on profits in excess of a fixed base for firms investing in warehousing), as well as an Investment Allowance Incentive, an International Consultancy Services Incentive, an Approved Foreign Loan Scheme, and an Approved Royalties provision. In general, all capital equipment can be completely written off in 5 to 10 years, and R&D spending can be double deducted, as can all expenses for export promotion. In principle, these incentives do not discriminate between domestic and foreign investors. In practice, because they are usually linked to sizable investments involving advanced technologies in new (targeted) industries, the overwhelming majority of participants are foreign.

This is arguably most vividly demonstrated in Neptune Orient Lines, the Housing Development Board, and the Singapore Bus Services episode. Neptune Orient was the most classically dirigiste - there was an industrial mission (set up containerized logistics in Singapore), and Goh Keng Swee was the man to do it. HDB was classically progressivist in the vein of regarding its mission as a blend of social progress, actualizing popular mandates, and modernization over status-quo private sector corruption/ineptness:

(observe the sheer contempt toward landlords too)

and the chaotic formation of SBS in 1975 (read the whole thing, it's fascinating) - the vacillation of the Singapore government between refusing to embrace nationalization and, uh, nationalizing it, and then having to second civil servants and army officers to run the thing, representing a trenchantly anti-nationalization attitude eventually losing to a political reality where the party's only real strategy for handling a private-sector problem full of scheming Chinese family capitalists and radicalized Chinese labour was to nationalize everything and hand it to English-speaking bureaucrats and unions that they controlled and trusted.

As in much of the West, Singapore underwent dramatic privatizations across the 1980s. Although investment arms still own majority shares of the relevant corporations, the tangled ad-hoc bureaucracies that built up expertise in operating private industries toward political ends was dismantled, and minority shareholder management has meant less parachuting of ministers into directorial positions. Contemporary industrial policy in the form of Economic Development Board subsidy programmes isn't quite the same as Lim Kim San or Goh Keng Swee personally marching in. Orders of magnitude in just how much the state "creamed off" for policy ends (as Ngiam colourfully puts it) do make a difference.

As in the section quoted from Young above, Singapore represents exactly the Soviet-era idea of suppressing consumption to fund investment that fuels rapid growth. Rapid growth sounds very nice, but don't forget that consumption was suppressed. Gini is admittedly unreliable as a measure of inequality in Singapore due to the role that publicly-owned and heavily-subsidized housing, education, and healthcare play, but it's certainly the case that there is a generational problem with coerced savings leading to a shortfall in disposable income for older generations of lower-income workers.

ronya fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Apr 2, 2015

# ? Apr 2, 2015 03:17

Fojar38: Sep 2, 2011; Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia

also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->

"Authoritarian state capitalism" is an economic system whose only successes have been in spite of itself. Singapore because of its geographic location and China because of its sheer size.

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:20

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 11:44

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Fojar38 posted:

This. The problem with the "benevolent king/dictator" argument used by authoritarians and authoritarian sympathizers is "what if you don't have a good king?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century
:v:

# ? Apr 2, 2015 04:36

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Lee Kuan Yew -Americas elites are eulogizing a tyrant

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