Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

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

"I could not ask their sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy: Lee Kuan Yew"

"I resolved to enable every household to own its own home. If we were going to get the people to take National Service seriously, I could not ask their sons to fight and die for the properties of the wealthy. We worked out a personal savings scheme that allowed them to own an apartment painlessly through instalments over 20 years. We sold the apartments to them at below cost to enhance their assets. Today, 95 per cent of Singaporean households are homeowners. It has immeasurably increased their wealth and our social stability. Without home ownership, we would have become like Tokyo, Seoul or Hong Kong, where the voters in the cities are disaffected because they pay a large proportion of their salaries in rents.”

https://sgmatters.sg/i-could-not-ask-their-sons-to-fight-and...

Weaponised the court system to repress union backed opposition, despite having been engaged with the union movement in his early years (as I understand it)

It is a kind of workers paradise. If you're well behaved and don't shout you get a good education, health system and housing. 95% owner occupied is pretty damn good.

Huge dependence on south Malaysia migrant workers shuttling over the bridge every day, so it's "homes for us but not for thee" however he did cry when the greater Malaysian dream fell apart.

The arguments over his house and garden post death sum up the legacy well: he did not seek ulogising or mythologised shrine status, the apparatchiks can't resist the temptation.

I see parallels to Britain's Enoch Powell. Super smart, highly educated, disinterested in what others think, Not afraid to be contrarian and not particularly interested in performative democracy but also a bit one eyed on his hobby horse. If Powell hadn't been a racist shit, he could have been as effective as Lee Kwan Yew was.

Trivialising Singapore-for-foreigners as "no long hair, gays, gum or spitting" misses the point. Singapore welcomes all kinds of people if they have money, contribute to society and are useful or rich. Modern Singapore has gays and lesbians and tattoos and long hair a-plenty. They're just in a "don't ask don't tell" demi-monde netherworld.

Many people would feel safer in Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore than in the USA. Better housing and health policy, less graffiti and street violence.

My father landed in Singapore in the 1950s on the steamship SS Rajula, eighteen years old with 10 dollars to his name, to seek his fortune, stepping into a crime-ridden, filthy slum.

As he described it, people crammed into shophouses, kampongs (villages) and squatter settlements with no proper toilets (human faeces and urine were carted away by "night soil" men carrying them in open containers in the streets), no clean water, no drainage, no fire safety.

In 1959 barely 9% had public housing. The streets boiled over with riots, strikes and communist agitation, one bloody flashpoint after another.

Work was casual and wages were thin. The British still ruled but had lost all moral authority after the Japanese rolled over across the northern causeway with not much of a resistance from the brits (the idiots were stationed in the southern island of sentosa with their guns pointing south thinking the japanese will invade from the sea) and buggered them in the war.

Singapore was a poor, overcrowded, combustible place with no business surviving, let alone becoming a nation. The hard truth the world forgets: Singapore is an improbable nation. By all logic, it had no right to exist. No natural resources. No hinterland. No oil, no land, no army, no water of its own. Thrown out of Malaysia in 1965, a tiny island of immigrants with three races, four languages and nothing in the bank. By every textbook measure, it should have failed.

It didn't, because of one man's sheer will.

My father now is 90 years old, worked his way up as a menial laborer, put himself through night school, became a successful businessman, and built a family. To my father and his generation, LKY will always be their hero.

From a shit-hole to the first world. In one generation.

I love Lee Kuan Yew and his story. He's revered not just in the West but East as well. Obviously people can't see past his style but they'll never tell you it wasn't effective.

There is a lot to learn from his philosophy and there used to be countries that were on a similar track that also saw similar transformation from a backwater agrarian society deciding from marxism to market economy.

His legacy speaks for itself and I love how he can make Western journalists completely shut up, a true Cambridge law student, he could speak English effectively out of all non-Western leaders.

The only problem is that he lost the war on the hot scorching weather, something that really takes a way from enjoying the country. If Singapore had cooler weather, it would've been completely flooded with all the disillusioned Westerners from democratic countries.

Lee Kuan Yew is praised by Western academia because of 'benevolent authoritarianism' — in other words, the idea that a small elite should rule over the workers. In fact, his policies were authoritarian and dictatorial.

Despite Singapore's geographical advantages, Lee's achievement in transforming it into a great financial hub is certainly a testament to his capability. However, when you consider his track record 'Operation Clodstore;, the suppression of freedom through defamation laws, and Singapore's early streaming education system — it ultimately seems like he only nurtured people from his own faction, believing that parental background matters.

While criticizing Singapore like this, I suddenly looked up Singapore's statistics. To my surprise, its intergenerational social mobility ranks 20th in the world — higher than I thought. Moreover, I found data showing that South Korea's social mobility is even lower than Singapore's. That made me feel depressed. Of course, with a population of just 5 million, Singapore is easier to manage than larger countries. but stil it functions properly as a nation.

And since Singaporeans reportedly have high life satisfaction, it even makes me question whether authoritarianism is really that bad. But I still dislike authoritarianism based on my personal values.

Still, maybe this is just blind hatred — because I've never been at the center of any industry in my entire life; I've always been an outsider

>Stamford Raffles stands – according to the plaque attached to the plinth – on the ‘historic site’ where he first landed as an agent of the British East India Company on 28 January 1819 and, thereafter, ‘with genius and perception changed the destiny of Singapore from an obscure fishing village to a great seaport and modern metropolis’.

This is one of the greatest lies ever told, that Singapore was an obscure fishing village when the colonial powers came to "modernise" Singapore.

Read the history books, Singapore is bang in the middle of ancient super powers of India and China. It's has been and always has been for most of its history a successful entreport for several thousand years before the colonials first visited, and the later Chinese immigrants settled in Singapore.

The founder of Malacca, where the Strait of Malacca name originated from, was himself a prince from Singapore and at the time better known as Temasek.

The people who originally settled in the Malay Archipelago several thousands years ago were successful maritime explorers. Their descendents discovered and migrated to wider Austronesia including Madagascar to the west, and New Zealand and Hawaii to the east several thousand years before the colonial powers "re-discover" these places. They also who speak their ancestors derivatives languages until now, that at one time US government tried to ban.

Singapore is a strange outlier among successful democratic countries. There's always stories that are untold. For example,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Chin_Siong?wprov=sfla1

Operation Spectrum untracing the conspiracy' https://share.google/2mRpZk3RGaYUKCRXS

In this kind of discussion, you cannot disentangle the fate Singapore from Malaysia. The comparison between the two is interesting.

When Singapore was squirted out from Malaysia in 1965, it had no natural resources, surrounded by hostile Muslim nations ( though not as bad as Israel, but still), and no one to depend on, except themselves.

The Malaysian Ringgit vs Singapore dollars was 1 to 1 back then in 1970s. And now it's 3.1 to 1. This alone is a testament how far Singapore has come.

One important factors separating Singapore and Malaysia is Malaysia's affirmative action (or quota system) that favors the majority, the Malay Muslims, which gives preference to Malay and Islam in all things including tertiary education, GLC opportunities. If you want to get listed in Malaysia stock market you need to have certain quota reserved for the Malays. It was supposed to ensure social justice and diversity, equality and inclusivity for everyone; why should Chinese monopolize all the opportunity to make money and leave Malays poor? This was so unfair.

This affirmative action was started in 1970, after the famous May 1969 racial riot incident. The argument was the riot happened because that the Malays were badly left behind by circumstances; they suffered so much injustice that they had to release it out on others, and the government must do everything to improve their socioeconomic status, lest the same thing happened again. It originally lasted only 30 years but in 2000, the government deemed that the Malays need more help still, and so it's still in effect today.

The affirmative action initiative by Malaysia government would have made any DEI adherents proud for it's thoroughness. Yet when you look at the results you must have wondered whether we did anything wrong. For if it was done right then why, by the affirmative action supporters own admission, the gap didn't close? And why Malaysia lagged so much behind Singapore? And how much minorities were driven away-- and many of them went to Singapore, to contribute to the economy there-- precisely because of affirmative action?

> The story of Singapore’s ascent from ‘Third World’ to ‘First’, following its forced separation from Malaysia in August 1965, happened under the watch of another visionary, Lee Kuan Yew.

Ah, yet another uncritical narration of the People Action Party's literal party line.

Singapore was the second richest city in Asia (behind Shanghai) before WW2. While the PAP obviously deserves credit for their economic management from the 1960s onward, their starting point was far from the opium-riddled fishing village backwater they like to paint it as.

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