/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2640521
bro Japan is a massive failure of a country. Korea is not much better, the public is massively unhappy and doesn't want kids. Taiwan I don't know much about but they are also propped up by the west to use against China. And as for China itself, yes they embraced global trade kind of but they never became 'neoliberal', they are highly-regulated state managed capitalism. These countries get grouped together because westerners are ignorant and racist lol.

>>2640521
China never became neoliberal, Jesus it feels like at this point you are just throwing words around.

>>2640533
Bro, im talking about overall economic development. Japan korea, and taiwan despite being unhappy shitholes still did develop economically. And china while never become neoliberal, still has a highly regulated state capitalism that has some parallel elements with singapore.

Im saying that all these economic models show that you can use a singapore style system to develop industry, urbanization and etc. Its just in the long term it doesnt guarantee happy results and could just end up producing a dystopia like south korea and japan was.

> These countries get grouped together because westerners are ignorant and racist lol.

Its also because they do share elements with each other. Inductive planning, state control of finance, export oriented industrialization, powerful economic bureacracies, etc etc. And some cultural similarities.

>>2640539
I never said china became neoliberal. Im saying that chinas current model of highly regulated state capitalism has some parallels with singapore. Or at least the political economic system which singapore used during its development.

>>2640525
People ask: What about when the Chinese suffered like in the Opium wars or under Japanese occupiers? And I tell them those anecdotes don't count because back in the day the people of China were French, you see.

>>2640515
I am the anon who wrote that post originally. My percentage was wrong. It is more like 25-30 percent of world trade. But that is still by far the largest percentage of trade of any global choke point: the others being the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Straits of Hormuz, Gibraltar, Bab el Mandab straits, and the Turkish traits. Of those, you have Oman and UAE abutting the Straits of Hormuz, and they are "rich" societies. Panama is also essentially a city-state consisting of Panama City and its hinterlands and, while somewhat dysfunctional, is very wealthy by Latin American standards. The Turkish straits has Istanbul and its environs, which is by far the richest most developed part of Turkey. Suez Canal and Bab el Mandab have not yielded wealthy city-states, and this case it probably is a case of poor state policies and development. Still, the Suez is a big money maker for Egypt and one can imagine some imaginary city-state detached from Egypt itself would be very wealthy if it weren't attached to a highly dysfunctional state. Gibraltar is fairly wealthy but noting like Singapore.

>>2640533
>bro Japan is a massive failure of a country. Korea is not much better, the public is massively unhappy and doesn't want kids. Taiwan I don't know much about but they are also propped up by the west to use against China.
All of these societies have acute problems, but they are absolutely successful examples of state capitalist development and, if you were to visit, you'd encounter highly organized, technologically advanced societies that outclass many Western countries.

>Taiwan I don't know much about but they are also propped up by the west to use against China.
Korea and Japan were propped up after WWII as well. But Taiwan, like those countries, went on to stand on their own two feet as successful export economies. The US heavily subsidized Japan's recovery and Korea's rise with favorable policies that allowed them to import to the US, as well as putting in massive orders to their industries during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Taiwan faces similar problems to Korea and Japan such as problems with birth rate, exploitative work cultures, etc. but it is also quite nice by developmental standards.

>These countries get grouped together because westerners are ignorant and racist lol.
They get grouped together because they followed very similar models of economic development which were influenced by each other and which all received US backing on various fronts. Mostly, Korea and Taiwan wholesale borrowed Japanese economic developmental policies and some ideas from the USSR concerning the implementation of 5 year plans. Korea's Chaebol system was essentially a copy-paste of Japan's prewar Zaibatsu formations (which were succeeded by Keiretsu after WWII) of massive sprawling family enterprises. Taiwan also had a similar use of crony capitalism where state and corrupt private enterprises power worked hand in glove to implement industrialization.

>>2640525
>China is successful because it's majority Chinese.
Well, China became successful for many reasons. But an understated factor is that when China opened up in the late 1970s, Chinese diasporas in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan had already developed to a good degree and many of their experts, managers, entrepreneurs flooded into China to offer the government their services in the economic development of the country. Not for selfless reasons, but because they stood to make massive profits by building up Chinese industry (which they did).

>>2640670
Good observations anon

>>2620299
>>2618169
>>2618171
There are hundreds of islands in that trade route. We know it's a good place because people want to move there, no-one wants to move Venezuela, Cuba, China, North Korea, or ever wanted to move to the USSR or East Germany. If you need to coerce people stay in your country, then the system sucks, if you can't keep people out when you coerce them to stay the fuck out, then it's good.

>>2640423
>The soviet union was like a poor kid who had nothing. And had to build himself up to wealth. Meanwhile the east asian tigers were poor kids who got adopted by a rich family. Who then proceeded to shower them with aid and investment.
It's worth noting both that if there's no Four Asian Tigers miracle the only options are the Soviet Union and China, but that the city states of Hong Kong, and Singapore developed without aid. Something like 70% of global inequality reduction this century is due to the development of East Asia. The half the remaining 30% is South Asia, and another quarter South East Asia (now dubbed, perhaps too soon, the Tiger Cub Economies - following an inspired economic model). Apparently the remainder is split between recovery of the former USSR from privatization and the development of Africa.

>>2640710
The point is that they control access through a bottleneck and can charge fees on everything that goes through

>>2640710
>There are hundreds of islands in that trade route.
And only one of those islands (Singapore), was already deliberately cultivated as a major entrepot and naval base under the British Empire, which is why it attract so much Chinese immigration in the late 19th century in the first place. It was already positioned to exploit that trade artery unlike any other major port in the region. The country's being chucked out of Malaysia made that all but inevitable.

>>2640791
>no-one wants to move Venezuela, Cuba, China, North Korea, or ever wanted to move to the USSR or East Germany.
Until the 1980s, North Korea was the larger economy than South Korea and garnered much sympathy from the massive Korean diaspora in Japan that was trapped there after WWII. Of course, South Korea overtook it with its ruthless export-oriented developmental policies, which North Korea very much lacked due to it's isolation from major trading partners like the USSR and China. East Germany did attract a lot of migration from Eastern Bloc countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia because it had the more developed economy. It also had a large immigrant community from Vietnam, which is still felt in Berlin today. The USSR also had a lot of internal migrants going to the Russian SSR from Central Asia, Ukraine, and the Caucasus. It's definitely true that professionals would have preferred to leave to the West, but that is because the West garnered massive wage increases on account of their economies being already highly developed. The same shit happens today and we call it "Brain Drain" which has been a massive problem that has hindered the development of the so-called Third World countries. If those educated populations had to stay in place instead of migrating to the West, those economies would be more stable and would develop faster. This is just universal problem of individual self-interest competing with national self-interest, and no solution has been develoepd to this day. You will see neoliberal economists praise remissions, but the reliance of developing countries on said remission leads to severe problems and distortions in economic development.

>>2640808
keywords
>was
>had

>>2640808
>severe problems and distortions in economic development.
See, the Philippines and Nepal as archetypal examples of economies heavily reliant on remissions from their diasporas in the developed West, Japan and Gulf States.

>>2640812
The point is, that there is a general rule whereby educated professionals move from less developed to more developed countries. This exists within the European Union today, where Southern and Eastern Europeans move to German or Scandinavia. Within the US, professionals will move from less developed areas (the "flyover states") to more developed regions, leading to internal brain drain and unbalanced development. This isn't a problem of socialism per se.

>>2640818
Basically, you get a doom loop where the less developed areas become stagnant which leads to more brain drain which leads to further stagnation and underdevelopment, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Again, not a problem that was confined to the Socialist countries when they existed.

>>2640710
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TtZtTA6cTU
Interestingly, there is the example of the Seychelles, a semi-successful quasi socialist entity at one point which has a high standard of living for Africa. But it's a tiny population and not nearly as successful as Singapore. Funny vid

>>2640424
But it also had the special status of being able to trade with mainland China while not being cut off from trade with the outside world, essentially serving as China's "window to the world" and a massive trade hub which made it rich(and then made it go into decline after the rest of China opened up and its monopoly was lost).

>>2640844
yep, don't disagree

>>2640791
Also, to add to this comment, consider that Singapore was surrounded mostly by the Dutch East Indies, all of whose ports had high taxes. The British undercut the Dutch ports by making their port a "free port" with no duties. Secondly, nearby British ports like Penang further up the Malay peninsula had a shallow water port. Singapore already had natural deep water harbors and had better situated geography allowing it to dominate trade for Indochina, the Dutch East indies and trade between India/China/Europe.

>>2618169 FPBP

Why is this thread even needed? A scarce few places in the world get the completely fortuitous and non-replicable chance to be a commercial/financial hub for transnational capital, it has nothing to do with policies or ideology. And notice i say "places" instead of "le country", Singapore is a glorified port city, i guarantee you if you took the main port city of the average African country and raised it into country status, suddenly le heckin wholesome life quality indicators would significantly go up because they're no longer averaged down by the impoverished hinterland, actually there's already an example, it's called Djibouti. Singapore's hinterland is not even in Singapore, it's in all surrounding countries that it sources its slave labor from, exact same as the GCC states, but that is not accounted for in your amazing "miracle" figures that only includes Singapore's labor aristocracy

Next you're gonna ask how can landlocked Malawi copy Panama's "success", this is the lowest of the low liberal-tier "PoLiCy oUtCoMeS" analysis

>>2643827
Read this >>2640542 >>2640670

>>2643827
Seychelles and Mauritius are the best places in Africa for a reason

>>2644560 really great posts about countries that aren't the "country" of Singapore but passed off as if they had the same "model" as Singapore indeed.

For the record, the Korean and Taiwanese "model" was being strategically crucial imperial posts in the pacific and thus being allowed to industrialize, the Chinese "model" was a proletarian state offering the single largest and most profitable reserve army of labor to transnational capital in exchange for maintaining economic sovereignty. No matter how hard besieged Cuba implements the same "model", it will never ever industrialize.

The "east asian tigers" is nelioberal mythologizing propaganda founded on ignoring the reality of imperialist imposed underdevelopment, it's so mythological they literally call it a "miracle" because bourgeois economists don't actually have a scientific understanding of economics

>>2645911
Many countries are in a position to be allowed to develop in the sense of a Japan, China, Singapore, or Hong Kong. Few are geopolitically positioned to get active (non-technical administrative) help like a Taiwan or South Korea. What's missing is the institutions and ideas which allow for a state-directed program of:

1. Dissimulation of technical expertise.
2. Redirecting of capital towards modern labor saving devices.
3. Within a capitalist system insuring these resources aren't destroyed by (global) competition.

1. and 2. are just increasing crystalized labors share, while the 3. is maintaining profitability.

Incidentally it would be wonderful if there were western institutions to without prejudice to the sort of state they were aiding to provide technical administrative aid as was received from the UN for Singapore to establish its developmental state, or was self-created by the Japanese.

>>2645974
>What's missing is […]
In reality this is an oversimplification. Especially if you've got an economy dominated by economic rents, basically feudalism. Then there's more work to do, even patently revolutionary work. In the US this might be largely the case because IP (rents for getting there first - irreconcilable with late development), capital rents, and ground rents, makes unbounded income for finite work. Together these are a massive part of the economy.

Ngl Singapore is THE cuck country
Imagine needing that strong of a government

when you think about it. The british empire was the first example of the east asian model but western

>>2651335
Better examples are probably France, Prussia/the German Empire and Piedmont (Northern Italy), which had heavier state involvement in development. The US also had it to some extent with its high tarriff regime and government collusion with industry during and after the American Civil War. The British model was too idiosyncratic because it was the first of its kind and involved a lot of miscellaneous factors coming together in the late 18 century to create the first self-sustaining "industrial takeoff".

>>2651335
To summarize "Kicking Away the Ladder": Britan had initiatives of technical poaching, taxes on intermediate product export (lower value added), and planning of manufactury placement as early as the early 1500s. And by 1721 we have the claim from Walpole's address to Parliment:

>It is evident that nothing so much contributes to promote the public well-being as the exportation of manufactured goods and the importation of foreign raw materials.
Tariffs during this period were reduced on raw materials used for manufacturing. If a duty was paid on raw materials it was reduced upon export. Export duties were removed. Imported manufactured goods tariffs were raised. Export subsidies were raised.

These policies largely stayed in place for some two generations after industrialization had in effect made any competition in the global market nil.

singapore is not capitalist. you're just too stupid to recognize the elevated stage of communism in which singapore exists. it is a stage called DENGISM

soon the entire world will embrace DENGIST socialism

>>2651637
>German Empire
>Prussia
These are complicated examples. What every instance of catch up development seems to have is poaching of technical expertise, and technology. Together with means for its diffusement.

At some point you need to invest capital, tariffs and subsidies are ways to bias capital investment in higher value added despite a lack of clear competitive advantage (which if you're to ever be competitive must exists because you lack technical expertise or infrastructure) but theoretically if you can break the monopoly on technology and have the resources to hand, you can create competitive industry.

>US
Many examples such as the US which industrialized largely before it's strongest tariffs were put in place did so by effectively displacing the locals, taking their abundant resources, and applying technological expertise from the mother country.

>Northern Italy
A seemingly even more complicated example.

Man all you fucking angmohs piss me off. Singapore is a deeply misunderstood country, especially if you ever only listen to its own loudest source, LKY. You have to consider how and why Singapore was created in the first place.

Singapore is in an amazing location for maritime trade. It is still the busiest port in the world. If you ever wonder why Singapore has a majority Chinese population despite being a Malay island, it is precisely because they came over due to already established trade routes by the Hokkien population (hence their overwhelming presence in Singapore/SEA). Singapore was far more developed as a city than anywhere else in the colonial era than say Malacca, also Raffles promising the Peranakan bourgeoisie free port in Singapore.

LKY did not get into power as a neoliberal, but as a fabian socialist. The 'communists' he denigrated constantly? They were the people who formed the PAP with him and put him into power! Ironic that his start in politics was representing people in court known as the Fajar Trial that he would later label as communists. His neoliberal turn was after Singapore had public housing, transport healthcare and even if a public pension. After Singapore built (and still has) SOEs, nationalised all the land. Of course the current PAP is slowly priviatizing whatever they can, with the current opposition Workers' Party pushing them back.

Hell, it is deeply ironic that LKY would say these things >>2618229 when his road to power infamously demonising his 'communist' ex-allies as Chinese chauvinist as well (their leader was not as well educated and could only make speeches in Hokkien). He doesn't even like Chinese people as well, crushing the dialect association and banned dialects on state media.

Nor is Singapore an amazing place to be in right now. The neoliberalisation has left the city state with low TFR on par with South Korea and Hong Kong. And this is already with constant immigration and Malay minority, the native chinese and indian would be even lower. Rising living costs and declining economic power has meant that the PAP couldn't make any gains against the Workers Party, despite exploiting the tariff situation like Carney and Albanese did. Ironic that LKY spent decades ranting about welfarism only to have the current Prime Minister be called Voucher Wong for his constant reliance on government vouchers and stimulus spending. PAP even gives out free groceries as 'political campaigning'. The economic miracle of Singapore for Singaporeans is over. I doubt any local neoliberal or fascist would be happy with the sober reality now.

>>2640486
>They are immigrants, they have two choices either die like a pest in their own country or in a foreign country.
Most socially conscious Singapoorean.
>GDR had stasi, what is your point?
Do you even know what Stasi means? Evil-sounding word, omg so scary! They protected the state from those who spied for the CIA and worked to destroy it, they didn't go around chasing weed smokers and pickpocketers. Checkmate.

>>2652650
Then why do they immigrate to foreign countries
>muh marijuana
How about you go to a rehab junkiee?

>>2652766
I don't have to smoke weed to not want people to be executed for it, you fucking peabrain.

>>2618165
Singapore glazing has gone out of hand,

It is not more impressive than what has been achieved in PRC and it remains an utter dead end.

It cannot be a role model for any state that is not a prime maritime city-state as lee himself stated, you retard.

>>2652564
A lot of what you said is already discussed here.

>>2652815
>It is not more impressive than what has been achieved in PRC and it remains an utter dead end.
The housing policy, compulsory savings policy, Meiji style investment in foreign education, and development banks are the most remarkable things. The former has inspired policy in Chongqing, while the last is common in many places to a lesser degree. FDI would probably be less in places without as much comparative advantage due to the port, or being a tax haven, or in the case of the other non-city state East Asian Tigers geopolitical significance. I said it before, but just because you have comparative advantage doesn't mean you're going to exploit it in a fashion that leads to development.

Increasing the savings rate, removing unproductive rent seeking, directly investing to catch up human capital, and directing domestic investment locally are all huge things that could be done.

>>2653672
I think the problem is that like the (presumably) asian anon said over here, >>2652564, the city has become more neoliberal over time. Also, its tax haven policy is distorting the economy and making the cost of living unaffordable for many Singaporeans over time.
These videos were actually decent despite the podcast channel name
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBS3fAqY0lw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiC3ezjUkCk

>>2653868
also asianometry has many good videos on Singapore, he even made a playlist of his videos. They tend to lean positive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZEbejmz9Uw&list=PLKtxx9TnH76TS34YoUFNgTdAB1qNE4wTK

>>2653868
>the city has become more neoliberal over time. Also, its tax haven policy is distorting the economy and making the cost of living unaffordable for many Singaporeans over time
This seems agreeable and well documented even though the city has something like three times the home ownership of NYC (with 80% the GDP PPP per capita) largely because of what remains of the policies.

>>2653615
But what isn't really emphasized is the shifting narrative by and of PAP to suit current tastes, discarding and obfuscating history when needed.

>>2654044
Yea home ownership is high but the newer homes are smaller and smaller than old ones, with people needing more and more government subsidies to get one. All of this is because HDB is being seen as an asset rather than a service.

>>2654305
>But what isn't really emphasized is the shifting narrative by and of PAP to suit current tastes, discarding and obfuscating history when needed.
fair enough

>>2652564
Finally a decent post in an otherwise questionable thread
>despite exploiting the tariff situation like Carney and Albanese did.
I'm curious to know how in your view Albanese has put the tariff situation to good use, aside from attempting (so far rather fruitlessly) to secure some concessions for the steelmaking and aluminium industries as well as agriculture, he has been far more meek and willing to turn the other cheek about the whole thing than Carney has.

Is leftypol banned in Singapore? I haven't seen anyone from Singapore here

>>2652564
>Nor is Singapore an amazing place to be in right now. The neoliberalisation has left the city state with low TFR on par with South Korea and Hong Kong. And this is already with constant immigration and Malay minority, the native chinese and indian would be even lower. Rising living costs and declining economic power has meant that the PAP couldn't make any gains against the Workers Party, despite exploiting the tariff situation like Carney and Albanese did. Ironic that LKY spent decades ranting about welfarism only to have the current Prime Minister be called Voucher Wong for his constant reliance on government vouchers and stimulus spending. PAP even gives out free groceries as 'political campaigning'. The economic miracle of Singapore for Singaporeans is over. I doubt any local neoliberal or fascist would be happy with the sober reality now.

this is pretty much the same path japan, korea, and taiwan went. Lol

>>2651637
>>2652094
>>2652127
good posts

>>2667529
I get the impression that Singaporeans are live in a weird bubble and are very mentally strait-jacketed for the most part. They can't see anything outside their carefully curated and hypercompetitive culture of their authoritarian city-state.