The benevolent dictator, much like Communism, seems to be one of those semi-mythical things that seem to be good in theory but rarely if ever pan out in practice. But every so often there occurs an exception. If there was one man who embodied the archetype, it was Lee Kuan Yew, who passed away earlier today at the age of 91. The only other leader in today’s world who even begins to approach his stature is Rwanda’s Paul Kagame.
Under Lee’s 50 years of formal and informal rule, Singapore went from being a Third World backwater with no natural resources to a gleaming technopolis and the world’s third major financial hub after London and New York. GDP per capita increased by several orders of magnitude. It refuted the modern idea, or rather dogma, that democracy and individual liberties are indispensable components of economic modernization. A clever foreign policy enabled great relations with both the US and China. Visible corruption is all but non-existent; the story might be apocryphal, but apparently Lee once even went as far as allowing the execution of a friend for stealing from the state. This kind of severe, impartial justice is all but unimaginable under Putin, whose top political elites enjoy literally palatial lifestyles, or even under Xi Jinping, where the anti-corruption campaign is real but has to take into account that some political clans must remain untouchable.
He was famously disdainful of democracy – “with few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries… What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value.” That this might not be taken well by Singapore’s more Americanized youth was of minimal concern to the elder statesman: “It’s irrelevant to me what young Singaporeans think of me. What they think of me after I’m dead and gone in one generation will be determined by researchers who do PhD’s on me.”
As Michael Anissimov’s and [AK: Redacted on request]’s NRx blog More Right points out, “Lee Kuan Yew was the living politician that most exemplified the neoreactionary philosophy.” I would also argue that he is also now the dead politician who most exemplifies neoreaction, right down to his son inheriting the Prime Ministership. On this, they are absolutely correct; it is very much worth pointing out that Singapore’s political culture is defined not only by authoritarianism and clean, effective public service, but by an unapologetic elitism that is quite shocking to Westerners used to politicians who pander to the masses.
Example: Singapore is a small state, a city-state, and space is at a premium. So new cars face exorbitant taxes so that only the superwealthy can afford them. In this sense, it is heavily regulated and unapologetically pro-oligarchic. But that doesn’t preclude Singapore’s ordinary citizens from enjoying one of the best public transport systems on the planet. It is also rated by the World Bank as the world’s easiest country in which to do business, so at least getting rich is perfectly within everyone’s reach – provided he has the requisite ability, of course. Not everyone does, as Lee pointed out with brutal honesty:
If I tell Singaporeans – we are all equal regardless of race, language, religion, culture. Then they will say,”Look, I’m doing poorly. You are responsible.” But I can show that from British times, certain groups have always done poorly, in mathematics and in science. But I’m not God, I can’t change you. But I can encourage you, give you extra help to make you do, say maybe, 20% better.
If you think this hints at a dangerously un-PC worldview, you would be correct. Here are some more quotes that you will not see in the glowing obituaries of him in the mainstream press:
On evolution and human biodiversity:
I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that’s the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils… I didn’t start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I’ve come to.
Against equality:
There are some flaws in the assumptions made for democracy. It is assumed that all men and women are equal or should be equal. Hence, one-man-one-vote. But is equality realistic? If it is not, to insist on equality must lead to regression.
Contempt for demotism:
I ignore polling as a method of government. I think that shows a certain weakness of mind – an inability to chart a course whichever way the wind blows, whichever way the media encourages the people to go, you follow. You are not a leader.
On the necessity of pro-eugenic policies:
If you don’t include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society… So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That’s a problem.
On IQ and black people:
The Bell curve is a fact of life. The blacks on average score 85 per cent on IQ and it is accurate, nothing to do with culture. The whites score on average 100. Asians score more… the Bell curve authors put it at least 10 points higher. These are realities that, if you do not accept, will lead to frustration because you will be spending money on wrong assumptions and the results cannot follow.
Had he dared express any of these ideas as an American politician, he would have been hounded out of public life by any of the newspapers who now sing his praises. Instead, to the extent racial issues are at all raised, he gets praised for creating a functioning multicultural society, with some of its less “wholesome” aspects, such as a cognitively elitist immigration policy that specifically targetted ethnic Han, getting glossed over. Part of the reason for this is surely the banal fact that he is a non-white foreigner who can says that which is forbidden to others. But an even bigger reason, and one that helps enable the former, is simply success; it is success, not so much cannons, that is the last argument of kings.
But lest you think this is just another neoreactionary ode to Lee Kuan Yew, prepare for disillusionment. Leaving aside the more subjective and ideological factors, such as the restrictions on political and civil liberties, there are at least several spheres in which Singapore’s performance was rather underwhelming.
1) The rise in Singapore’s GDP per capita was no doubt phenomenal, but it was broadly in line with those of the other East Asian tigers. A vast increase in wealth was inevitable even without Lee Kuan Yew, which is not to say that he did not do a lot to help it along. Singapore is now much richer than Taiwan or South Korea, but the latter are proper countries with substantial agricultural hinterlands, and far too populous to specialize as global trading and financial hubs, so the comparison is not necessarily valid. Singapore does not really stand out when compared to other global cities: Its GDP per capita (PPP) in 2014 was $67,000, which is not cardinally higher than that of London, Paris, or Hong Kong, all three of which were at $57,000, and lower than leading American cities such as Boston ($76,000), Seattle ($73,000), San Francisco ($72,000), New York ($70,000).
Moreover, when you adjust for differences in working time – on average, Singaporeans work 2,300 hours a year, relative to 1,800 in the US and as little as 1,400 in most of Western Europe – there develops a very real difference in productivity. This is especially stark when you consider that it almost tops the international PISA tests, suggesting very high levels of human capital.
But two arguments can be made in mitigation. First off, economic underperformance relative to human capital seems to be common to all of East Asia; for instance, Japan “should be” at least as wealthy as the US or Germany per capita by a simple extrapolation of its national IQ, but instead it is only just as wealthy as Italy. Why? Beyond the scope of this post, but there it is. The other argument is that the above cities, especially major national capitals like Paris and London, draw the cognitive elites of those countries, such that their average IQ and economic potential is well above their national averages and thus perhaps similar to Singapore’s anyway. But leaving aside that Singapore is also a magnet for regional cognitive elites, the GDP per capita and especially the productivity data still indicate that Singapore remains unremarkable or perhaps even subpar in its economic performance.
2) The long grind at work might explain why Singapore’s citizens are apparently the least emotional on the planet, according to a 2012 report by Gallup. Even hardened neoreactionaries, I would imagine, would attach some value to people’s happiness, be it out of paternal beneficence or at least concern for the longterm stability of the state.
3) This isn’t a exactly a failure in my opinion because it’s not like Singapore lacks for people. It’s a very wealthy citystate and will easily find more than enough high quality immigrants to make up any demographic gaps. But it’s nonetheless worth pointing out that Singapore, with a total fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman, hardly lives up to neoreactionary natalist ideals.
4) I certainly do not wish to pretend to be any kind of expert on Singapore, so feel free to correct me here if you consider me seriously misguided on this. But it seems to me that – for its respectable GDP per capita and prodigal level of human capital – Singapore is home to remarkably few scientific and cultural accomplishments. No Nobel Prizes, no Fields Medals, etc. This, of course, might also be a general East Asian thing; the achievements of Japan, Korea, and China in fundamental science are all very modest in comparison to what they “should be” compared to the European IQ-innovation correlation curve. Again, a discussion of this is well beyond the scope of this post. Still, speaking of Singapore specifically, at least Japan, Korea, and China all produce tons of patents per capita for their respective levels of economic development. In contrast, Singapore’s patents per capita is an order of magnitude lower than in Japan and Korea, being lower than in China, and wedged in between Belgium and Russia.
Finally, all societies die sooner or later, but they are remembered for the great art and culture that they produce. A valid counterpoint from the onset is that much of Western culture today is crap – Justin Bieber, 90% of modern art, what passes for “literary” novels. But there are still many flashes of genius and true creativity around. Sci-fi is undergoing its second golden age. Game of Thrones. Abandoning the postmodernist dreck that has infected too much older artistic media, the creative types are flocking to new technology-enabled pastures like video games. I am not aware of any major cultural products from Singapore. Hong Kong, much more liberal and freewheeling than Singapore, became famous for Jackie Chan and action movies.
What’s Singapore’s most recognizable cultural achievement? Is it… Lee Kuan Yew?
Above all, neoreactionaries should bear in mind that their Asian idol couldn’t care less for formal ideologies, most likely including their own. He was, above all, practical. “Does it work? If it works, let’s try it. If it’s fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one,” as he told the NYT in an interview in 2007.
Raw “IQ” doesn’t necessarily predict even economic success. Dostoyevsky noted that all that was needed is a kind of peasant cunning, singlemindedness and habit. Even if materialism, consumerism and wealth were not the kind of ironic reductio ad absurdem they are, it’s easy to demonstrate that smart people do dumb things and even often outsmart themselves. You can get yourself and others in a lot of trouble with the wrong kind of thinking, which is magnified by misdirected intellectual capacity. “The smartest guys in the room” only leveraged the extent of their destructive selfish behavior – in the end, even for themselves. There’s the wisdom of restraint in Einstein’s lament, “Had I known, I would rather have been a watchmaker.” Since even the most clever find their intellect slave to their passions, self control and responsibility ought to characterize the most intelligent, those who master their appetites, not have them amplified by their gifts. Even modest gifts, carefully husbanded, will produce better outcomes for both self and others than profligate genius.
I would nominate their cuisine and general food culture (hawker centres) as a cultural achievement of Singapore.
Karlin:
“Under Lee’s 50 years […] GDP per capita increased by several orders of magnitude.”
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If you measure with a ruler (as I did) the data from the graph in the link provided by Mr. Karlin,
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/03/lee-kuan-yews-singapore ,
the increase is by factor approximately 18.
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It is huge, but by no leap of imagination it is
“several orders of magnitude”.
I have no idea, if the rest of the facts in the post are emotionally exaggerated to the same degree.
I have never been to Singapore, and have no opinion about late Lee Kuan Yew.
Karlin:
“Lee Kuan Yew […] right down to his son inheriting the Prime Ministership.”
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I checked with Wikipedia,
“Lee and Kwa [Lee’s spouse] had two sons and one daughter”,
and none of them “inheriting the Prime Ministership”.
One thing worth watching concerning Singapore: it has a population of 5.5 million, but a resident population of transient overseas workers of 1 million. That is a scary number, and one that is already making a lot of Singaporean locals very unhappy. People I talk to shrug and say that it is the price of progress, but if the locals do not feel themselves to be the beneficiaries of that progress, it sounds terribly like a recipe for trouble.
I was wrong. Apologies to Mr. Karlin.
Brigadier General Lee Hsien Loong (Chinese: 李显龙, born 10 February 1952) is a Singaporean politician. He is the third and current Prime Minister of Singapore, and has been in office since 2004. He is the elder son of Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew.
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But he became Prime minister not right after his father’s retirement,
but after about 6 years of Prime-Minister Goh Chok Tong.
I don’t think that’s the cause. Remember, all human behavioral traits are heritable, including emotionality and happiness.
Well, it is a city-state, right? Population density is a factor, an unavoidable one, apparently.
East Asians in general, and perhaps Singaporeans in particularity, are notoriously uncreative vis a vis NW Europeans.
I think a key moral here is that you can only do so much with what you have to work with. That said, Le Kwan Yew has made an amazing accomplishment in at least one arena: stamping out corruption. That is quite a feat when you’re dealing with fundamentally corrupt, clannish people (even if they were somewhat select).
The lack of artistic creativity is no doubt a function of Singapore’s stiflingly authoritarian culture. The lack of original scientific research is probably also a function of that culture, and as you note, seems to fit a broader East Asian stereotype. I think classic liberals and libertarians may have a point that artistic and scientific achievement really do need a culture of free inquiry which goes hand in hand with democracy and civil liberties, not reactionary conformism and its associated paternalist government, so to that extent neo-reactionaries are seriously misguided, at least if they prize such creativity and innovation (if they don’t, then that’s fine, I suppose).
Regarding the fawning obituaries, I wonder how much it’s due to Lee’s infamous habit of suing critics, even the press, for libel in England’s notoriously plaintiff-friendly courts. The Economist was constantly forced to issue retractions and apologies any time it said something less than adulatory about him.
As you note, below-replacement fertility is only of concern if the working population can’t be replenished with culturally compatible outsiders. There are plenty of smart ethnic Han out there who’d love to move to Singapore from areas where they’re less welcome, e.g. the rest of Southeast Asia. For countries like Japan and South Korea, who are not replenishing their aging populations with compatible immigrants, it is much more serious, and unfortunately local politicians are starting to make uncomfortable noises about opening up immigration to low-skilled Filipinos and others, rather than figuring out how to make their native women produce more children. One horrible explanation is that when a country reaches a certain standard of living, raising children simply becomes too unattractive a life prospect for the individual. Israel seems to be doing better, though, so maybe look there for answers.
Sci-fi going through it’s second golden age; really?
Furthermore I think the fact about low cultural achievements may also stem from that East Asia has possibly spent the last generation “catching up”, highly imitative culture (what do we know about K-Pop) and finally the unprecedented cultural hegemony of the West (and more specifically the English-speaking strain).
Finally I think Singapore does stand out in it’s more immediate vicinity, being an economically East Asian society even though it’s geographically a South East Asian one. So maybe more for a more valid assessment if Harry Lee’s legacy could also be taking into account Malaysia, Indonesia & Thailand as comparative benchmarks for Singapore as well.
“What’s Singapore’s most recognizable cultural achievement?”
How about a universal healthcare system that is the most financially efficient in the industrialized world? Western cultural amenities have been bought on credit. How about the development of a culture that is both conservative and enlightened? (Of course, many “neo-reactionaries” and conservatives are unenlightened, for instance, about the reality of global warming, which proves my point.)
Lee Kuan Yew is the most consequential leader since Hitler. He convinced China to open its economy. He convinced the US to prevent the Domino Theory from coming true by fighting in Vietnam for years, while newly independent countries like Singapore and Malaysia dealt with their internal Communist threats and developed military forces. Lee Kuan Yew solved Communism.
Very timely post about this incredible man. One time a Taiwanese politician commented that Sigaporean were dumb comparing to other Han people. Certainly politicians words are not very credible in general. Any subjective evaluation of any things are often very inaccurate like Dunning-Kruger effect.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/seriouslyscience/2015/01/20/facebook-knows-better-friends/
Thus, machine and/or objective testing produce far more accurate evaluation than human subjective process. During culture revolution era under Mao, the college admission was based on recommandation, which produced poor quality college graduates and encouraged corruption due to “human evaluation“. Job hiring based on interview only without testing also produced far more underqualified employees due to false impression during interview which were bitter lesson from our own business experience. Unfortunately our guts feelings are often wrong.
To be sure, Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore is a flawed Utopia. Nevertheless, its system is better than western style democracy which in general does not work. No evidence that western style democracy per se would bring prosperity at all.
Functioning western style democracy is mostly a transient, here today, gone tomorrow. A sweet spot between theocracy and secularization. However, it would be the best system if a country is facing prolonged war. One person one vote is after all “one spear one vote” as in classical Greek city states or “one gun one vote” in modern time. This is why Switzerland was the first country to adopt universal male suffrage but the last Western to give its female citizens the vote.
By the way, More Right is [AK: Redacted on request]’s, not Mike’s.
Some things aren’t quantified in GDP statistics. Singapore is orders of magnitude safer, cleaner and more pleasant than London, or any Western city plagued with leftist agitation, Third-Worlders, rampant criminality and anarcho-tyranny.
But hey, Game of Thrones!
Singapore is just one city, a financial center, basically a dozen of banks, manned by (guess!) bank clerks. It is indeed a cultural desert, but it’s supposed to be one.
The base population of Singapore is not Han Chinese but low IQ Malays. That fact alone should explain the lack of productivity. Han Chinese are much more productive.
Great city-states (Athens, Venice, Amsterdam) become rich first before the artistic glory. Singapore has only been truly rich for one generation. Give them some time. The prosperity will draw artists like flies to turds.
Lee Kuan Yew will be remembered as the greatest political leader of the 20th Century.
There was a 14 year gap between the two. During that time, the elder Lee was ‘Senior Minister’, a newly created title. In other words, he never went anywhere. The daughter in law heads up Temasek Holdings, a government run investment company. Other family members also hold prominent positions. It’s essentialy an uncrowned monarchy
Singapore’s failings are very small indeed when measured against what it has accomplished. Not as wealthy as San Francisco and New York? Lower level of patents per capita than Korea and Japan? No Jackie Chan movies? These lack of accomplishments seem trivial when considering that five decades ago Singapore’s future as an independent polity was in doubt. It had to build a national economy, raise an army that could make swallowing the city-state a problem for its much larger neighbors, quell racial unrest, and set up the political infrastructure of a state – and it had to do all of this within a very short period of time.
Consider Singapore’s impressive infrastructure.
Its airport is over thirty years old and still considered among the very best in the world.
Compare that to Denver, which is considered the best new major airport in the U.S., and yet can’t crack the top thirty on the same list above, even though it opened more than a decade after Changi.
The World Bank annually ranks the quality of port infrastructure, and Singapore comes in first or second every year. The U.S. struggles to stay ahead of Malaysia.
Singapore’s subway is also typically ranked among the best in the world, although its administrators prize functionality and efficiency over style.
The World Bank also ranks Singapore fifth in its Logistical Performance Index, ahead of Switzerland, the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Hong Kong. In the sub-category of Infrastructure, the city-state was second behind Germany.
Most of this is well-known, but what isn’t as well-known is that Singapore also has built an incredibly professional and capable military. Here are a few surprising facts about Singapore’s military.
8 percent of Singapore’s population is in either the armed forces or its reserves.
One-fourth of Singapore’s budget is spent on the military.
Singapore’s 2009 military budget was larger than Malaysia and Indonesia’s combined.
Singapore has the largest air force in southeast Asia.
The quality of Singapore’s navy is well respected.
It’s important to realize that many small states in Europe and Asia do not have to worry about building or maintaining a serious military. For Hong Kong, it was never an option, and for states like Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, American security guarantees have lessened the need.
But Singapore had to take its security seriously from the beginning because it was surrounded by numerous larger neighbors who didn’t much like it.
You can’t ask a city-state of five million people to do everything. Singapore has been remarkably successful, and Lee Kuan Yew is the major reason for that success.
I’m not sure what you mean by “base population,” but three-quarters of Singapore’s population is Han.
Democracy tends to exacerbate internal conflict. It is probably OK in a very homogeneous country like Iceland but disastrous in the long run im more diverse countries.
I figure Singapore (unlike Hong Kong) was a mud puddle in the 1960s; it is unsurprising it hasn’t developed any great or even mediocre artistic output yet. Their tastes presently seem to run to whatever would be popular with a large corporation from what I saw on my visit. Come to think of it, I am hard pressed to identify any great artistic output from any world culture since the 1960s.
Since they still have a third world mentality over there, they do emphasize engineering over science. Probably most comparable to South Korea, who had an economic rise under Park at around the same time. I’d say their scientific output compares favorably to that of South Korea. They’ve done decent semiconductor research (as has South Korea) and materials science, and have done top notch medical and bio work. They’re also well represented in the international collaborations; they’re doing much better than, say, Russia on that these days, and Russia is rather larger.
They have a decent number of inventions as well, though they don’t publicize it: lots of computer doodads (thumb drives most famously) originate there.
Part of the motive for Lee Kuan Yew’s “Speak Mandarin Campaign,” may have been to break down some of that clannishness, at least among Singaporeans of Chinese descent. Apparently, certain businesses in Singapore used to be informally dominated by people from particular Chinese ethnic groups or regions; and whether it was on purpose or otherwise, the use of these dialects for networking had the effect of excluding outsiders from those businesses.
Given that Lee’s “Speak Mandarin Campaign” initially targeted only people of Chinese ethnic background, along with his comments about ethnic voting in multiracial societies, the program might also have had an unspoken ethnic consolidation motive, though now it apparently promotes learning Mandarin to anyone in Singapore who wants to learn, and obviously, speaking Mandarin is pretty useful considering China’s importance these days.
http://countrystudies.us/singapore/21.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_Mandarin_Campaign
Also, I’d like to point out that although East Asians, and specificially ethnic Chinese are by far Singapore’s largest group, there are also significant numbers of other people there including Muslim Malays and people from South Asia, not to mention small numbers of Europeans and people of mixed background.
They are generally just as successful as their avg IQ would predict except at the highest levels (Nobels/world changing inventions etc.) like other East Asians. So you don’t really need to be a genius administrator to make a place like Singapore developed, not being crazy is probably enough.
Singapore is home to remarkably few scientific and cultural accomplishments. No Nobel Prizes, no Fields Medals, etc. This, of course, might also be a general East Asian thing; the achievements of Japan, Korea, and China in fundamental science are all very modest in comparison to what they “should be” compared to the European IQ-innovation correlation curve.
When your main focus is on making money without much risk, copying the main innovators is the way to go not trying to develop new technologies – especially in east Asia where patent protection is a bit of a joke.
Yes, everybody looks at Apple and how long they have been at the top. However, they are reaching a technology plateau and their competitors are catching up and providing the same services for much less. Only people totally in love with Apple are willing to pay the higher prices.
I used to work for an also ran medical device company. We let the leader do all the ground breaking medical trials that cost a fortune. We made me-too products that cost a fraction to get regulatory approval compared to the leader. We spent all our effort on reducing the costs of our products and bumping up that ROI and EPS.
I doubt we had the financial resources to create groundbreaking science and technology even if we wanted to. One major failure and our stock would be in the toilet.
“Lee Kuan Yew is the most consequential leader since Hitler. He convinced China to open its economy. He convinced the US to prevent the Domino Theory from coming true by fighting in Vietnam for years…”
That can’t be true. I have no idea why the Earth is warming up, but the fact that someone who apparently blames industry also holds opinions like the above does no favors for the athropogenic theory.
The most consequential leaders since Hitler and Stalin were Gorbachev (negative) and Deng Xiao Ping (positive).
Reposting a good comment from my Facebook from a native Singaporean:
Evidence for global warming is incontrovertible and based on the laws of physics.
I don’t mean to suggest that Lee was the dominant voice for the domino theory in US politics, but he was an important voice for it.
Any credit Deng Xiaoping takes for China’s rise must be shared with Lee, as China admits.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/23/news/economy/lee-kuan-yew-singapore-china/
Regarding #1: Remember that Singapore has an awful climate: warm, humid, tropical. I did the 5-hour Singapore Airlines tour of the city a decade ago while transiting, and couldn’t wait to get back to the air-conditioned confines of Changi Airport. Such a climate is enervating, and be a factor in the relatively low productivity (I think this is true of pretty much every tropical country.)
This article could have been written better.
GDP PPP: Singapore’s GDP is phenomenal despite so much of its energy must go towards maintaining a standing army against massively larger neighbours, like Israel. If more of its human capital, land, and capital flowed towards economic areas I have no doubt it would have a higher GDP PPP than all the US cities in your list.
Also, many of the East Asian tigers rose on the backs of an export model based on cheap labour. SG did not have that luxury and basically leaped from fishermen to capital-intensive industries on the strength of the State making smart bets.
Fertility of 1.3: Its not like SG hasn’t noticed this problem. For decades SG tried every trick to increase fertility, but nothing worked so they resigned themselves to immigration. This isn’t a flaw of SG but a broader problem for our times. As far as I know, I have not seen successful fertility campaigns.
Culture and Nobel Prizes: I group these together because they are both luxuries. Lee Kuan Yew regularly faced comments from Western journalists asking if Asians could be as creative or show genius like Europeans. LKY shut these down hard. He saw it is as baseless and wishful thinking by the West. The past 50 years has been catchup for East Asian countries, people forget how nascent their economies are. Only now are new Asian generations growing up with plentiful capital and wealth. It is those with plentiful capital who will be able to take advantage of opportunities that do not directly translate into the material wealth to raise a family, ie Culture and Nobel Prizes.
Finally, you failed to mention SG’s civil service. It pays as good or better than the private sector so that the best and brightest lead the nation. Due to this, it is also incredibly meritocratic.
Ir’s a little tough to square the confident “I can show you since British times” rhetoric with Singapore’s refusal to publish broken out by ethnicity PISA or TIMMS data. This is, I suppose, not an ethos which has spread.
The last time they did as I recall, Singapore’s Malays scored pretty well compared to a number of European nations.
I wonder if some of the Singapore culture’s surprising quality for those who are not the elite is not due to its isolation without any major firm alliances to protect it.
Surrounded by more powerful nations, that means it has to have buy in from its citizens, in addition to its high military spend. Thus it is exempted from the usual Confucian corruption and elite nest feathering, to a greater extent than would be expected.
(A counter example is Israel – which is in a situation in many ways similar yet (perhaps through choice) an almost totally different path, due to religion, ethnic nationalism, militarism.)
Another tangential question: How cramped is Singapore as a city? Many Western people tend to ascribe a squalid feel to Asian cities not just on how neat and shiny everything is (or isn’t, as the case may be), but also how little free space is available.
horse hockey. MANY Singaporean middle-class people devote a MAJOR fraction of their disposable income to getting one/maintaining its licensure. Not something ===I=== would do with my money, but, hey – freedom of choice, lah.
I wonder if Anatoly even knows where Sembawang neighborhood is, much less has made chit-chat with the 19-year-old conscript police officers who patrol its mall.
I vote that future comments about Singapore being limited to those who do, and have.
You will never see Mandarin spoken at the neighborhood hawker-centres/beer-gardens. That will always be Malay, Hokkien, or Tamil
There’s lots of native Mandarin-speakers in Singapore, but not many of them are eligible to vote.
I’m not an expert either, but I’ve come away impressed with LKY. Here’s my rebuttal to someone on reddit.
The criticisms seem to not account that Singapore was disadvantaged.
A man builds a city-state consistently ranked as #1 or #2 economic zone in the world, alongside having the lowest crime, in an area of the world that’s populated by 3rd world Muslim nations. Yes if you litter, chew gum, do graffiti, discuss openly about race, then you’ll get caned or taken to court. He often silenced his critics by taking them to court, but other leaders do much worse.
http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp
There’s plenty of LKY’s interviews online where he addresses these criticisms. He’s not a perfect leader, but people discrediting him are not properly accounting what he was working with. Even the other Asian tigers: Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have many advantages over Singapore.
Those are homogenous populations in the tens to over a hundred million (ie. Japan) to draw talent from. Singapore is a 3-race country, Chinese, Indian and Malay with many ancient traditions, languages and religions that do not overlap. The other countries also don’t have to worry about finding a water supply. Singapore is surrounded countries where the majority of the people are Muslims.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Islam_percent_population_in_each_nation_World_Map_Muslim_data_by_Pew_Research.svg
Even Hong Kong did not have the disadvantages that Singapore did. While it doesn’t have a great population, it has a couple million more. HK is homogeneous and shares it’s border with other Han Chinese, not Muslims, and it isn’t a dirty swamp. HK also doesn’t have the constant threat of radicalized Islam as Singapore does.
If Singapore is a 3rd world country in some ways, then almost every country in the world is a 3rd world country in some ways. What government injustices are we comparing caning to? The US’s legal and prison system?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Singapore
They have religion and 15% of their people are Muslims. LKY’s government has to consistently foil terrorists plans, some of which we’ve learned publicly since. Every ruling crew creates laws to protect itself. Singapore or HK consistently rank #1 or #2 in every economic freedom indicator. It has a GDP PPP per capita of $78,000.
In 2011, Singapore’s median household income was $55,357 (in USD) and after taxes they keep $50,307 of that. So the median household only pays 9.1% income tax. If we multiply $50,307 by 1.427325692 (the ratio between Singapore’s GDP per capita PPP and the nominal GDP per capita), then we can estimate the median Singapore household income in PPP terms resulting in $71,804 USD. Now compare their median $71,804 net take-home pay to these other countries that I’ve listed here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_take-home_pay
References:
All this done with a 15% Muslim population, surrounded by radicalizing Islam. Yet educated millionaires and billionaires from around the world actually go there to work and to live in a Muslim region world.
He’s been a phenomenal leader. Ideally there would be many other competitive city-states with their own rulers vying for citizens. That would’ve given us more opportunities to test political theories. However, given the state of current political systems, there has not been a comparable national leader. Singapore has been a de facto autocracy with LKY playing the role of a benevolent dictator, trying to create a stable, peaceful society. Singapore’s success shows us that a superior model for political rule exists. This is not to say LKY is the ideal leader, but his accomplishment gives us a data point that refutes the Cathedral.
Many times, he’s sit down and discussed openly his viewpoints against criticisms. Here’s one video of a group of young people questioning him. Even with a supposed free press, how many countries allow such an open and honest dialogue with their leaders?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihiE4oGyYlQ
On science, technological innovation and culture as luxuries:
The Soviet Union was in ruins in 1945. It created the first artificial satellite of the Earth in 1957 and sent the first human into space in 1961. Germany was also in ruins in 1945, and occupied to boot. That didn’t hamper German creativity for long.
East Asians lag behind Europeans in innovation even when they’re rich. The causes are most likely hereditary, i.e. biological.
http://giftedkids.about.com/od/gifted101/l/bright_gifted.htm
East Asian, has high technical and quantitative collective intelligence. His ”smart fraction” however, appears to be homogeneous in quality. They have many high achievers and few (real) gifted and creative types.
AK critiqued Singapore’s lack of cultural creativity. Those of you taking that as an opportunity to make assertions that East Asians are somehow biologically less creative and innovative, while having a noticeably higher IQ, are making quite a leap.
Even ignoring East Asia’s innovative dominance in technology and business this past century, you’re living under a rock if you haven’t noticed East Asia’s rising cultural influence. The most popular song of all-time on youtube is from East Asia, although we did contribute “Sexy Lady”. As for their Nobel talent, keep in mind that half of all Nobel Laureates are awarded to people between 50 and 70 years old.
Likewise, nearly half of Japan’s Nobel Laureates were awarded since 2008, and given Japan is the only East Asian nation having been an OECD country for at least 1 generation, believing that their creative output is due primarily to biological reasons doesn’t seem to be an intelligent position.
@ Expat
American cities do not have malicious neighboring states but they have those huge NAM populations within. I guess the costs of peace-keeping with those NAMs (including policing, rap projects in troubled areas, costs for commuting of people trying to avoid the terror) is bigger than the cost of discourage third world countries from invading.
Also Glossy is right about the comparison between western and eastern development. 18th/19th century Europe was extremely poor by todays standards, yet industrial revolution took place
East Asia is more creative than most Europeans and Americans acknowledge. It’s also too early to say whether East Asians’ per capita creativity will fail match European per capita creativity – assuming such a thing can even be measured.
But I would not call East Asia “dominant” in innovative technology or business over the past century. Nor do I think Youtube views is the best way to measure cultural capital.
Is that all the neoreactionaries care about, order? Knowing some of those people though I’m not surprised. About as fun to hang out with as Wilson from Cast Away.
You’d rather hang out in Singapore than bustling and creative London? Please just slide into an isolation tank and never emerge, you insufferable bore.
I agree it’s too early to say how creative they are. My point was that it’s careless to assert the premise is certain and additionally to say that it’s due to biological reasons.
http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-innovative-countries
I made a typo, as I meant decade and not century, yet the measurements I’m aware of show them doing quite well this decade. As for youtube views, I also wouldn’t overstate its significance, but I find it no small feat that it’s not in the lingua franca.
Considering the quality of much of cultural output, I might be inclined to regard Singapore’s non-participation as a point in its favor. So much of ‘arts’ and ‘culture’ in the last generation has meant enthusiastic embrace of degeneracy using a permutation that still has power to shock. Take ‘Conchita Wurst’, a so-so talent who is recycling a path trod by David Bowie (as Ziggy Stardust) 40 years ago, and who is considered Europe’s best specifically for being dissonant. Dissonance like we’ve seen in painting, musical tones, dance, and more. All this proves is that you are not able top the quality of past using the standard metrics, and need to hide from comparison.
Film production is in a kind of golden age when the those involved aren’t promoting the latest ridiculous (i.e. against reality) narrative. But music, fine art, dance and architecture have all descended into more primitive forms.
A beautiful city is itself a tremendous artistic accomplishment, especially for proles like me who lack the keen eye to see art in chaos, filth, garbage, feces and degeneracy. If those things are art, and if all civilizations must fail, then Singapore will give us art, in profusion, in the fullness of time.
Touche!
Singapore is not a beautiful city, sorry. Nor Beijing or Seoul. Tokyo look better than NY today, but continue being a NY copy. Mass immigration in Paris, doesn’t change the Paris charme or the elegance of Rome.
”Degeneracy” in a conservative perspective, but art is a self expression too, ofcourse, should have a tolerance to the bizarre, but some tons of bizarrice is not so bad as most of conservatives think.
Youtube views****
Cultural (high culture) capital never should be analysed by ”popularity”. Gangnam Style music is a funny shit, nothing more.
Euros and their descendents have a lot of serious problem to think to compete with equality with their eastern pairs.
A interesting observation, finnish childrens (euro-native americans too) are great in Pisa, like eastern asians ones, but look at to real differences between ”highly competitive asian environment”, where kids and teens study 8 years per day and look at to relaxed scholastic environment in Finland (Mikka, do your homework!!!)… wow, finn kids have very similar scores in Pisa than east asians with half of effort**
Or east asians students study in excess**
I’m excited that the analysis on whether LKY was an effective leader and whether Singapore’s system works has almost been concluded.
Just to add one more point: In addition to not having contributed much to world culture, they haven’t made much of a dent in football.
Sure, apologizers might cite their low population but just look at a country like Uruguay. How many players do they have playing in big leagues? How many times have we seen them make the quarterfinals of the World Cup? Singapore has a long way to go.
Interesting, many sour-grape comments.
I used to think that, but then over at the West Hunter blog someone mentioned Japanese pop culture (things like manga), so it’s difficult to argue the Japanese lack creativity. I would hold off judgement here.
To say that the current cultural dominance of the West (American pop culture specifically) is due to superior creativity is ridiculous. For centuries Asia was the cultural center of the world, producing great thinkers like Confucius, Sun Tzu and Buddha. Chinese, Japanese and Indian art and architecture has a long and rich tradition.
Cultures rise and fall – the West appears to be declining from the quality of popular culture (reality TV, sex and violence-soaked movies and TV shows, perverted definitions of “art”, and a general chilling of free expression that crosses PC boundaries). Asia has some of these issues, many imported from the West, but in many ways allows freer expression than the West.
Thanks, excellent post and comments.
As for cultural creativity, dynastic authoritarian regimes in Europe didn’t seem to get in the way of artistry. But Paris had dynastic authoritarian rulers for much of its history, and was almost always a magnet for talent. Charles Murray tried to quantify a correlation between liberty and artistry in European history, but couldn’t come up with much of one other than that extreme totalitarianism tended to drive great artists into exile.
By the way, Hong Kong’s influential movie directors John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai are refugees from mainland China: Wong puts forward a sort of Nabokov-in-exile air of how, much as he appreciates Hong Kong, the Wongs really should have been a leading Shanghai family.
I suspect that if LKY had been a ruler in, say, the 17th Century, he would have made sure to get his city-state some artists. But in the modernist 20th Century, he didn’t really see the need.
Asian countries find it easy to produce lots of media, these often seem not enjoyable to Western people based on personality.
Often they lack the sort of personality and attitude Westerners regard as the mark of “true” art.
Often Asian art is seen as: weird (doesn’t get out of his room enough), superficial (appearance is very important in many Asian cultures, people often do not overly scrutinise inner life, as much as situation and behaviour can even be read more astutely than by overly internal Westerners), boring (calming emotions are often preferred to intense emotions), lacking in social boldness, overly stylised / effete.
The personality averages and distributions are just different, so the combinations of traits differ and the art is different, and thus often seen as not creative.
Escher: the West appears to be declining from the quality of popular culture (reality TV, sex and violence-soaked movies and TV shows, perverted definitions of “art”, and a general chilling of free expression that crosses PC boundaries)
If those are cultural traits you see as Western, then Korea and Japan (and China, I think) must be the centre of the West.
It’s fairly obvious that Japanese are more creative than other Asians. Yet, even manga (since you mention it), one of Japan’s most important recent cultural productions, owes a great deal of debt to Western innovations.
It’s true that Japan has a long history of picture-based books aimed at the masses — perhaps longer than anywhere else — and it could be argued modern manga is a continuation of that tradition. But let’s get real. The modern concept of a comic book, with superheroes, etc., were almost exclusively inventions of NYC Jews. We must give credit where credit is due.
I say Singapore can keep its order, cleanliness, banks, work culture, safety, and all the rest. I respect that and they gotta do what they gotta do. Yet I suspect, when pressed, that every single person in these comments would still rather live in a western city of their choosing.
There is a balance though, and most of the West would benefit greatly if they swung back towards the Singaporean pole on many issues.
(Also, to whoever quoted Singaporean food hawking as some a cultural innovation — LOL! Perhaps you were joking and I didn’t catch the sarcasm but a) that’s not a cultural innovation and b) that exists in every single country in SE Asia.)
You would think so. I thought so.
But as Charles Murray argued in Human Achievement – a book Steve Sailer just indirectly mentioned, incidentally – an objective tallying up of eminence actually produces modest results for East Asia relative to Ancient Greece, and miniscule relative to Europe after 1500.
RJA: But let’s get real. The modern concept of a comic book, with superheroes, etc., were almost exclusively inventions of NYC Jews. We must give credit where credit is due.
Now, you can argue Japanese manga isn’t creative. (It’d be a dumb thing to do because it would be like arguing a nation with a massive tradition of novel writing isn’t creative because they didn’t invent the novel (although funnily enough, arguably the Japs did with the Tale of Genji), but there you go.)
But what the Japs did and have done with comics is more impressive by far that what the Ashkenazis did with the young world of science fiction, western, pulp adventure and costumed crime fighter comics that came before them (Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, etc. and all those other Protestant and Catholic names).
I’d also say superheroes, in the present day American form, are pure retardation and power fantasy – they are almost about nothing more than ridiculous random powers wielded by superficial personalities in utterly shallow worlds. The Ashkenazi Jewish guys behind them, the early ones at least, who weren’t that corporate and weren’t that serious about the whole thing, were nice enough hacks… but I hardly think they’d have expected the worst excesses of clomping nerdism that they inspired (I hardly think they’d have anticipated ridiculousness such as Kavalier and Clay or the existence of Frank Miller as an actual existing, non-parody human person).
LOL, keep padaling the myths that “the East Asians lack creativity” and “have few gifted”.
As we’re at Lee Kuan Yew, below is one of his best known Insead vids having a good laugh exactly at those, enjoy :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvBlzDz9ttM
(starting from 14’10”)
Anatoly,
Charles Murray, alongwith most other known Western writers on the issue such as Michael Hart, is quite Eurocentric to be honest. I wouldn’t take his Human Achievement as sort of THE unquestionable gospel truth.
China was the equivalent to the phrase ” East Asia” in the pre-industrial world for about 2,000 years, because Japan was very backward in comparison most if not all of the time while Korea was just a small vassel of Imperial China, both dedicating on kinda of “wholesale copy/paste of China”.
I do agree , however, that China’s achievement has been miniscule relative to Europe in the last 3oo to 400 years (yet it’s fastly changing as we speak…). To know the major reason why so, we’ll have to go back to the same old “Needham Question”. That’s a looooong debate…
Nonetheless, prior to that (i.e. spanning from 500 B.C. on to the 16th century), it is quite bold, putting it mildly, to argue with a straight face that the achievement of China ( aka “East Asia”) was “modest” compared to the West.
I partially disagree with Anatoly on this.
To me, LKY, underpinned by the sucess story of Singapore due to him, is like a typical success story of a rag-to-rich overseas Chinese family. His “flawed” and “controversial” policies in Singapore haven’t been due to his personal likes or ideology etc. luxuries that he can’t afford, but purely based on 1 thing:
to survive / to be safe.
Stunk between 2 very hostile Muslim giant neighbours, and between 2 geopolitical giant adversaries – Communist China (his mother culture) and the Anglo-Sphere(his adopted culture), with no land, no resources, no money, no water, no/little external help, with 2 million multi-cultural, multi-racial muturally suspected if not hated people who mostly had no decent education of any kind at all…, one wrong move LKY and Singapore could have ended up like Gaddafi and today’s Yemen long ago.
Under this circumstances, the single most important thing driving LKY/Singapore (i.e. this “overseas Chinese family”) has always been, IMO, the most basic human instinct – to survive.
This survival instinct has forced out some of the most valuable natural assets of the Han Chinese:
Intelligence, industrialness, discipline, pragmatism, flexibility…
These things have made Singapore, and LKY’s unrivalled and uncontroversial legacy of creating one of the richest, safetest, cleanest places in the world, with one of the highest living standard and healthcare, from nothing, within 1 friggin generation! It’s just like a typical successful overseas Chinese family, really.
Presumably, most Singaporeans are working in air conditioned offices, so not sure that would explain it.
The problem with a lot of Chinese advances is that they were lost to history and there is no direct link to present day technology. I have read that in some burial site a carriage was discovered with parts made with such precision that this would have been the first instance of replaceable parts well before Eli Whitney.
When De Gaulle, a somewhat similar personality to LKY, came back to power in France in the late 1950s, he hired Andre Malraux as Minister of Culture to make France cool by subsidizing young, non-Communist artists. Malraux gave money to young film directors like Truffaut and Godard, making the French New Wave cinema a big deal in the early 1960s.
To De Gaulle, a traditional duty of the ruler of France was to be a Patron of the Arts, which included making sure Paris was a center of fashionable creativity.
But sponsoring fashion comes with its own risks. For example, the French New Wave directors started out as anti-Communists because Communists dominated the older generation of artists (e.g., Picasso) and intellectuals (e.g., Sartre perversely switched to Stalinism around 1950). But in the mid-1960s Godard switched to crazy Maoism as part of the fashion switch to the New Left in the later 1960s. This almost brought De Gaulle down in May 1968, when he secretly fled to a French military base in West Germany before Pompidou could retrieve him.
I remember reading a book by Paul Theroux some years ago. It was one of those he did about his railway travels. He decided to visit Singapore. At the border crossing the guards had a look at him. Theroux’s hair at that time was sort of typical cool-guy longish in the 70s fashion. Sort of like a Herman’s Hermit without the bangs.
The guard said to him, “Your hair iz radda rong.”
Theroux said to the guard, “And yours is rather short.”
The guard was not amused.
Singapore is a typical Asian tyranny complete with personality cult dovetailing with a hive mind mentality. They are another bunch who should be summarily deported from the U.S. and Europe along with Moslems, Hispanics and Blacks.
Karlin quotes another commeter: For centuries Asia was the cultural center of the world.
You hear that sometimes. But of course Asia has never been the cultural center of the world. The most you could say is that China has been the cultural center of Asia.
Just like Rome was the cultural center of Europe for centuries.
Only modern Europe (together with the United States) for the last several hundred years can claim a truly global reach. Look at the business suits men wear everywhere.
A very interesting and thoughtful discussion. For whatever it’s worth, my own opinion would decidedly lean on the positive side.
As one or two other commenters have suggested, I would argue that future historians will rank Lee among the towering world leaders of the last half-century, perhaps less because what he did directly in his postage-stamp-sized city-state than because of his broader influence, especially with regard to the rise of China.
When the post-Mao Chinese leadership looked around at the world, I’d think that Lee’s great success provided them their strongest indicator that a turn to guided market economics might take them to a place they actually wanted to go. Western countries were totally different and completely disorderly. Japan was their traditional enemy, with a very different cultural structure, while the South Koreans were former vassals. Taiwan was one of their bitterest ideological foes, and tiny colonial Hong Kong, with its chaos, crime, and corruption was hardly a model for the billion-plus Middle Kingdom. But many of the PRC leaders probably looked at orderly, clean, successful, and disciplined Singapore and saw a future they could embrace, with some of their public statements indicating this. Back in the late 1970s I and my friends frequently discussed exactly this point, joking that perhaps Deng should consider giving Lee a medium-sized province to run, just to see how well his methods scaled. So I think a case can be made that the two refounders of modern China were Deng and Lee.
For Communists to admire Singapore doesn’t seem too surprising to me. Although Lee may be widely hailed as a great man by neo-reactionaries throughout the world, I’d suspect that if the leading European Socialist thinkers of 100+ years ago were brought back to life, they might grumble at some of Lee’s ideological deviations–notably his vocal embrace of Capitalism—but overall they would feel that no other world political leader of the last century had come so close to achieving the dreams and goals they’d set, and so quickly, under such difficult conditions.
As I recall, Lee started his career as a dedicated Socialist, founder of the People’s Action Party, and was even occasionally suspected of being a Communist by his British colonial rulers. Once he came to power, his early emphasis on public housing, education, health, and government-directed economic development were certainly in broad accordance with such an ideological orientation. Put another way, what other world leader of the last century would have had policies and achievements that all those old-fashioned late 19th century Marxists would find superior? Jimmy Carter? Brezhnev? Mao? Certainly most of what constitutes the present-day “Left” would simply be shipped off en masse to mental institutions or work-farms.
So one of the ideological oddities of our topsy-turvy modern world is that (arguably) the world’s finest exemplar of successfully implemented 19th century Leftism was today widely considered on the extreme rightwing fringe of international respectability. At least by our silly Western MSM. China probably contains more card-carrying Communists than the rest of the world combined, and the CCP greatly admired Lee, underscoring the foolishness of this ideological verdict.
Obviously, there is a considerable trans-ideological aspect to failure. Leaders who are corrupt, drunken, and incompetent are rarely admired by either the Left or the Right. But I think it’s far more rare that Communists, Socialists, and rightwingers join together in praising a single leader’s achievements.
Heritable, yes, but to what extent? Wether these traits are heritable only matters if (and even then, to varying extents, depending on the degree of which they are inherited) they have a measurable, reliable impact in group behavior.
See above. While I don’t doubt that genetic factors have some direct influence upon this (such as lower temperament), I’d say that most causes behind NE Asian lack of “creativity” are only indirectly caused by genetic dispositions (as in, behaviors that can be heavily suppressed).
I don’t mean to sound like the “omg it’s all culture” types, but it’s not as if culture is just the type of clothes you wear or foods you eat.
Now, if there’s reason to believe that NE Asians are uninnovative primarily due to genetic traits, then I’d like to see some research.
Incontrovertible? Based on the laws of physics? Where is the concept of global average temperature in the laws of physics? such a thing would only apply to a simple closed thermodynamic system, which the Earth’s atmosphere is most clearly not, nor for that matter are the atmospheres of any of the other planets that have them. You can’t have an average temperature in an open thermodynamic system any more than you can have an average phone number in a phone directory.
The climate modelers don’t even possess a basic theory to base their speculations on, and make no mistake they are speculations, ones that may ultimately end up costing trillions of dollars. If the theory of AGW were really that strongly based on physics, you would expect more physicists of note to personally endorse the underlying theory ( Not votes by scientific organizations, such things are usually publicity or politically oriented ), but they don’t. The only physicists of note to chime in are ones who think the theory is hopelessly confused, despite the fact that most of them are political liberals befitting their backgrounds in academia, few ever endorse it. My guess is that if theory were even moderately plausible to them they would be publicly behind strongly and openly, and yet the silence is deafening. That’s a pretty thin reed to base an international agreement costing trillions of dollars on.
Can you post a link?
The laws of physics apply to greenhouse gas forcings. Period.
Any movement too closely associated with climate-denial quackery will be weighed down by it.
I’m a Singaporean (Sinkie in local parlance). As said before, what LKY accomplished was incredible given the following three constraints not faced by any other city-state:
Land constraints, lack of natural resources. Given that there have been many similar city-states with these constraints, its not a big deal on its own. Our lack of substantial agriculture also means we are very vulnerable, money spent importing when it could provide jobs for the less academically inclined.
National defence. Which other city state has to do this? Not Hong Kong. Not any of the piffling states in Europe. It eats up so much of our budget, manpower, and land. Almost the entire western part of Sg is reserved for military use, and of course it’s not really enough.
If only we can somehow acquire Batam and Bintan, as well as parts of Johor, and not spend so much on defense… sigh…
Yes, this.
The theoretical and scientific basis for climate change theory was laid down more than a hundred years ago (Svante Arrhenius) whose calculations of climate sensitivity were stunningly closely to the IPCC consensus today.
But otherwise, I would appreciate it if the conversation didn’t devolve into another climate change debate unless it has some relevance towards LKY or Singapore. Please save it for a later and more relevant thread if possible.
Speaking of ideology, it’s also quite interesting that the People’s Action Party flag is remarkably similar to the flag of the British Union of Fascists.
I doubt this was a pure coincidence. Overall, I would say that Singapore is definitely closer to fascism – an enlightened form of it – than to socialism.
Too many people here are giving Lee Kuan Yew oversized credit for China’s economic reforms.
Deng had several models in the nineteen-seventies besides Singapore. There was Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. All of them had growth rates comparable to Singapore in the 1970s.
Even if we discount Japan and Hong Kong as inappropriate models because Japan was a single-party democracy and Hong Kong was a British colonial outpost, we would still have the authoritarian examples of Taiwan under Jiang Jieshi and Jiang Jingguo and South Korea under Park Chung-hee.
Obviously, Deng was not going to give Taiwan or even South Korea credit for China’s initiative, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what was going on over there. He had also already made up his mind about starting economic reforms in China before he ever set foot in Singapore in an official capacity in late 1978. By that time it was obvious that something new was afoot in East Asia, and Deng wanted his people to be part of it.
Lee’s independence from Western ideology may have attracted Deng to use Singapore as an example of what he hoped to achieve, but it’s silly to say that Deng only opened up China because of Lee.
Yeah, you’re right. But one thing’s for sure: those Japs certainly aren’t as creative as non-Jewish Hungarians.
And let’s not exaggerate “Harry” Lee’s distance from the West. He was educated in English in Singapore when it was a British colony, became a British-trained barrister at Cambridge, and later returned to Singapore to work for a British law firm.
When Lee began his career in politics in the 1950s, he began as a parliamentarian with leftist sympathies for trade unions and the working man – something which hundreds of Western politicians on the left at the time would have easily understood.
When Singapore become independent, it was heavily reliant on trade and military aid from the West. Today Singapore’s most important trading partners are primarily close by in Asia, but for the first couple of decades countries like the U.S., Australia, Japan, and the U.K. were far more important to Singapore.
When Deng visited Singapore in 1978, the U.S. was almost certainly the city-state’s largest trading partner. I don’t want to demean Singapore’s independence, but the city-state would have been just as dependent on economic ties with the West at the time Deng visited it in 1978 as were Taiwan and South Korea, and probably as dependent on U.S. military supplies. One of the first things Lee complained about in meeting with Deng Xiaoping was China’s support for Communists in SE Asia.
Lee Kwan was a harsh critic of democracy and thought that his way, the way of the brilliant autocrat, was a better way. There is only one flaw in this plan, and you don’t have to look very far away from Singapore to view its real-world implementation. If you go with the great-man approach, you can be lucky and get Lee Kwan, or you can be unlucky and get Ne Win.
You lost me right off the bat with your praise for Paul Kagame. The man stands atop a mountain of skulls. He wears a western suit, speaks softly and is allied with parts of the west in various ventures therefore he receives a lot of fawning praise in the western media.
Singapore has obviously done well but it’s a city-state whose example isn’t particularly transferable to actual countries. As a lazy American, at this distance, Singapore earns praise even as I have no desire to live in a place like that. For that matter the culture here at home has become appallingly rotten and decadent. Is there something in-between that could be held up as a success story that might actually have some appeal?
I’ll second the vote for their food culture as an achievement.
I too have a generally favorable impression of LKY, but it is true that if you compare Singapore to Hong Kong or Taiwan it is clear that Chinese can and will flourish under a far looser sort of authoritarianism than Lee implemented.
Another flaw in Lee’s style from a neoreactionary point of view is that Lee actually distrusted his own race. Much like the Communist Party on the mainland, Lee felt that anything traditionally Chinese was backwards and embarassing, and that Chinese people had to be molded into a more “modern” efficient homo sinica. It worked in terms of making Singapore a very attractive place for foreign investment and expatriates, but in terms of Chinese culture Singapore produces nothing, while Hong Kong and Taiwan are very interesting places.
Taiwan is interesting because it has been arguably one of the most successful societies on the planet over the last 60 years, yet never gets much credit from anyone.
“The base population of Singapore is not Han Chinese but low IQ Malays.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore#Demographics
In 2009, the government census reports that 74% of residents were of Chinese, 13.4% of Malay, and 9% of Indian descent,[161] while Eurasians and other groups made up 3.2%.
“Game of Thrones”
???!!!
That crap TV show with Hank the Angry Dwarf?
If you’re gonna name a really good example of pop culture, how about TWILIGHT, the movies that is.
Singapore has managed to escape the high suicide rates more common among the other Asian Tigers. Not a perfect proxy for people’s overall happiness, but at least a reasonable indicator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
(30. United States)
Re: Taiwan, yeah. Taipei is a rich city. But no one wants to talk about its relative democracy, because the fact it has thrived with nationalist and Japanese colonial heritage and American alliance really does not please the Chicoms. So instead we get all this flannel about how hard it is for East Asia to develop and aren’t those chicoms doing such a good job?
A lot of ancient Chinese cultur has been lost due to the periodic civil wars that tore up the country, with the 20th century cultural revolution being the latest example. Indian culture was irreversibly changed and much of its art and architecture destroyed by Islamic invaders. Even without considering these factors, I think Charles Murray exaggerates the importance of Ancient Greece relative to these 2 old and giant cultures.
Seems modern continental east asians, particularly, chineses, are not the same than those who lived in the same time than the Confucius or Lao Tse. Remember, China have enormous population. By logic, the chinese diaspora should be simply brilliant, but they are ”only” above average.
Wise words, but do not expect many people here, who idolize pure intellect, to appreciate them.
OTOH, as an ethic for organizing society we could do worse than emulate some aspects of Yew’s vision. I doubt that many things like this happen in Singapore:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/tenn-stripper-charged-starving-son-death-cops-article-1.2106592
You can almost predict that when the mother’s name is Brittany, she is unmarried, and her child’s name is Anakin, that something bad will happen. And she’s got another and one on the way. Twenty-one!
This, while nearly any woman in life with some prospects is postponing pregnancy, freezing her eggs, and so on….seriously, you have to admit that we are nuttier than Singapore. Yew may not have created a Utopia, but he surely didn’t create the Hell that is modern capitalist democracy.
@Fourth Doorman – comment 68
Here are a couple cites for the greater performance of Singapore Malays than Europeans on the TIMSS, back when Singapore last broke it down in 2003:
http://www.mccy.gov.sg/~/media/MCCY-corp/Publications/ProgressofMalayCommunity1980.ashx – cite from Singapore Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.
Relevant page is 8, 2003 TIMSS Grade 8 (13-14 years old).
Mathematics rank of Singapore Malays is between Japanese, who were 5th place, and Belgian Flemish, who were 6th place and the strongest performing Europeans.
Singapore Malays’ Science rank was between 15th and 16th, much lower relative to their mathematics rank compared to the overall Singapore score.
(The Singapore Indians are also mentioned in this report, but not in the TIMSS section – they’re the ingroup with the Malays on most educational participation measures, although a little higher, and the ingroup with the Chinese on money and measures of family stability. Which fits our picture of overseas Indians as people who are not near as education oriented as Chinese but who are very businesslike, striving and success oriented indeed, and who are found performing every kind of business.)
http://www.archwayveritas.org/images/Department%20of%20Education.pdf – another cite –
“it is argued that Singapore’s student population is not as diverse as the U.S. student population. But Singapore’s population is far from homogenous; almost a quarter of its students are Malay or Indian, along with its majority Chinese population. Further, Singapore’s minority students far outperform U.S. minority students. To illustrate, four out of five Singapore’s Malaysian students score in the top half of the TIMSS-2003 at grade 8, whereas a majority of U.S. black students score in the bottom quarter of the TIMSS international student rankings (Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore, 2000; NCES, 2000).”
Singapore’s Malays, who are much maligned in “HBD” discussions of Singapore, actually seem pretty good by international standards, on the basis of this admittedly scanty data – we just don’t hear much about them because there aren’t that many, around, 10% of Singapore’s native population, and the Chinese and Indians are much more dynamic, in the case of the Chinese particularly educationally and economically and for Indians, economically.
It would be the same for a 10% of randomly selected Europeans in a society of around 80% Chinese, 10% Indian – we probably wouldn’t hear much about those Europeans, in terms of setting the world on fire on educational and economic measures, compared with the Chinese from that society (cultural measures and measures of innovative and modern thinking might or might not be a little different).
Malaysia could do a lot better than it does based on these guys – drawback would be you might need lots of Chinese teachers, and at the moment those Chinese that are in Malaysia are (being normal human beings in the sort of society they’re in and not saints) probably a lot more interested in nepotism, business and dodging the Malaysians’ pro-bumiputera laws than they are putting together a Singapore or China class education system that would benefit the Malaays.
It is scanty data though – unfortunately, despite LKY’s comments in the past, it seems that Singapore doesn’t have an interest in releasing its ethnically broken down data in more recent PISA and TIMSS, which could be more refined and thus more sound measures. I don’t anticipate there would be a great deal of change though, as the European and Asian participants are pretty similar in rank between the TIMSS and PISA.
You are an ignoramus, pure and simple. The Japanese overflow with creativity. Yes, some of their creations were influenced by the West but so what? Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese art. That doesn’t make him a copyist.
Manga, anime, Hunger Games (Battle Royale, look it up), the list goes on. Pop culture outside the vacuum that is the United States is heavily influenced by Japan.
It’s the United States that is uncreative. Everything it produces is an iteration of past glory, or is stolen from other cultures.
And… pandas can suffer with LACK of capacity of interpretation.
I said ”lack of creative gifteds” and a ”lot of high achievers”, a kind of gifted people. Is different than ”lack of gifted people” as you said.
The only reason Singapore is anything at all is because wealthy people and enterprises in Malaysia and Indonesia and so forth stash and launder money there. It’s just a parasite state, like Dubai or Lichtenstein or Bermuda, for other examples. These places siphon off wealth from nearby, larger countries where some amount of real actual work is done, and the governments have to do expensive things like provide the regional military security the parasite states enjoy.
The standard of living in Japan is not very high. As the author points out, it is more like Italy than Germany.
“Israel seems to be doing better, though, so maybe look there for answers.”
The Haredim? “Haredim regard themselves as the most religiously authentic group of Jews… due to a virtual absence of interfaith marriage and a high birth rate, their numbers are growing rapidly.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haredi_Judaism
“He convinced the US to prevent the Domino Theory from coming true by fighting in Vietnam for years….”
The United States lost over 58,ooo troops fighting a useless war. The United States lost the war and Vietnam is now all communist. And it does mean a damn thing.
“The United States lost over 58,ooo troops fighting a useless war. The United States lost the war and Vietnam is now all communist. And it does mean a damn thing.”
The United States “lost” the war, and Vietnam is now all “Communist.” I agree that war kills people.
To some extent, Bemused may have a point about the United States, but not necessarily for the reasons he mentions. Perhaps the more constraints there are on freely expressing and sharing thoughts for whatever reason, for example in deference to inhibitions in E. Asia or social taboos like political correctness in the USA, the less creativity there will be, all else being equal.
On creativity issue mentioned by so many above:
I believe there is a gene foundation for creativity. And I also believe that this gene foundation is (very) positively correlated to the underlining IQ.
So why one group of high IQ people are considered “creative”, while another not at a certain given time?
It depends on 1 factor what Panda calls “Civilisational Confidence”. The logic goes as such:
(Historically there’ve been only 2 civilisations fitting into this category: Chinese Civilisation and European Civilisation. e.g. Japan, or America, hasn’t been an original civilisation since Japan is basically a subset of Chinese Civilisation in her core with European Civilisation on her modern surface, while in case of America it is largely a sub-set of European Civilisation. This is perhaps due to the fundamental fact that historically they were not high IQ enough or hadn’t have scale of population large enough, or both.)
Once an original civilisation has been firmly established, it is highly likely by default that it will also become the pinnacle of Human Civilisation at a time in its surrounding areas and perhaps beyond. This gives its people the dominant position relative to their suroundings in terms of technology, economics, culture, … and even standard of morality. This gives its people a full blown yet legitimate sense of “Civilisational Confidence” which is the ideal substance for the unleash of their “creative capabilities”, that in turn would push the civilisation go even further…until it meets a “civilisational summit” contrained by time&space. Then it will start to decline, going to step 2 once again.
Hence pre-16th century China was probably at the top of phase 2, while 16th century to 20th (or 21th?)century China was probably at the end of the phase 3.
17the century Europe was probably at the start of Phase 2, currently somewhere in the middle of phase 3.
In light of above argument, their “creativity” issue or debate is in fact no issue at all, or a fake proposition at its best.
It has nothing to do with creativity capabilities which both of these people have in abundance.
Instead it has everything to do with the timing at the core – which phase each of them is in – hence the corresponding “Civilisational Confidence” ( with all the underlying technological, economical, and cultural power) they each have at any give time that facillitates the full expression of their innate creativity capabilities.
Singapore is a city trying to be a nation-state. It’s family oriented and has universal conscription. Families are the core and focus of the society. Its social policies are aimed at trying to foster traditional family formation in a highly urbanized, modern economy and environment.
London of course has completely different priorities. The appeal of a place like London is based on it being not very amenable to family formation and family life and there being a large supply of people with fewer or no familial ties, loyalties, and obligations. If you want middle class family life, you’re not supposed to be in London. You’re supposed to move out to the suburbs.
Family formation and child rearing may be boring and uncool, but there are people who value it relatively more highly.
Anon: Singapore is a city trying to be a nation-state. It’s family oriented and has universal conscription. Families are the core and focus of the society.
At the same time:
As of mid-2014, the estimated population of Singapore was 5,469,700 people, 3,343,000 (61.12%) of whom were citizens, while the remaining 2,126,700 (38.88%) were permanent residents (527,700) or foreign students/foreign workers/dependants (1,599,000).[4] According to the census in 2010 (the most recent census), 23% of Singaporean residents (i.e. citizens and permanent residents) are foreign born.[144]
The median age of Singaporean residents is 39.3,[151] and the total fertility rate is estimated to be 0.80 children per woman in 2014, the lowest in the world and well below the 2.1 needed to replace the population.[152] To overcome this problem, the Singapore government has been encouraging foreigners to immigrate to Singapore for the past few decades. The large number of immigrants has kept Singapore’s population from declining.
As of 2009, about 40% of Singapore’s residents were foreigners, one of the highest percentage in the world.
The London TFR is probably about twice what Singapore has. London probably has more genuine communities as well. I’m not so sure it’s a harder place to raise a family. International business creates conditions conducive to yuppies wherever it can. The focus of the city seems pretty similar, except Londoners can actually move to the suburbs, Singaporeans can’t.
He wasn’t perfect, but he was better than anything we’ve had here, and he was good enough for Singapore.
Singapore in a nutshell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS-JcaPFzp4
US Autotopia. Run here, run there, run for your lives. Hardest parts to change are the nuts behind the wheels. US economy is based on cheap car salesman talk, filling stations and muffler shops between failed strip malls. We got people collecting tolls sitting in booths breathing exhaust fumes and collecting quarters. Detroit’s the capitol of Autotopia. They’re pulling kids out of the deep freezers.
I never intended to bring this up, but since you seem to be genuinely interested in the question…
So, I don’t think gentile Hungarians are the most creative European people, actually I think they might be at the lower end or at best around the middle of the distribution. If Europeans are less creative than the Japanese (which, as I wrote, is not entirely impossible), then that would imply that Hungarians (being just average or worse among Europeans) are less creative than the Japanese, too.
In any event, it’s difficult to compare. For example the Japanese have always outnumbered Hungarians, in the past maybe 2:1 or 3:1 and currently maybe 10:1 or more. Would you divide the number of Japanese Nobels or novels or other artistic achievements by three or four or more to get a more meaningful comparison, when comparing the difference in creativity?
Hungarian output (cultural or scientific) has gone downhill due to two world wars and political changes, which led to economic stagnation (due to the country losing two thirds of its territory in 1918 as well as economic ties to the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and also due to the communist system after 1945), and a not insignificant part of the elite leaving the country. Japan only suffered one world war, and the elite never had to flee the country in significant numbers, not even after WW2. It’s no coincidence that the only STEM Nobel was awarded before 1945.
Another difference is distance. Hungary got gradually immersed in the Western European musical tradition. Musical education slowly approached Western European standards, and whereas Haydn worked for some time in the westernmost part of the country, and Liszt (on whom later) also came from there, Bartók came from a different part of the country, but before this musical culture could take roots, it was torn out again, e.g. Bartók himself left the country before WW2. On the other hand, Japan never was immersed in Western European musical tradition, and so despite its larger population I’m not aware of a Japanese composer of Bartók’s stature. Are you?
Another problem is mixed ethnicity. A lot of Germans (and later Austrians) came to Hungary mostly in the 18th and 19th centuries. (As a personal note, let me remark that I’m of half German/Austrian extraction either.) So, was Franz Liszt Hungarian (as he said so) only because he was born in Hungary? And what about Philipp Lenard (Lénárd Fülöp)? Richard Zsigmondy was an Austrian, but both of his parents were ethnically Hungarian. So was he Hungarian? If we postulate genetic differences in creativity, it might be reasonable to say he was. György Békésy was ethnically Hungarian, but he left the country after 1945 and received his Nobel as a non-Hungarian. Where would you put him? Carleton Daniel Gajdusek? Born in the US to an ethnically Hungarian mother and an ethnically Slovak father? Such problems barely exist with the Japanese (although US citizens did find their way into this list.
A further problem is language. I personally haven’t read much Japanese literature (although I heard there are really good ones), but I like haikus (as far as I know, an original Japanese invention). I know more about Hungarian, but I’d think Hungarian poetry was richer in the first half of the 20th century but otherwise Japanese literature is probably much richer than Hungarian. I don’t read so many novels, so that’s just a guess, I even have sizable gaps in Hungarian literature.
So what does all this mean? I don’t know. I think further research is warranted. Just as I said in my first comment.
That’s very amusing about the PAP and BUF flags being so extremely similar. Considering that LKY was studying at Cambridge right around the time that the BUF was getting so much attention, I agree it’s very likely more than pure coincidence. However, I’ll admit that pretty much all I know about LKY/Singapore is just what I’ve read in the newspapers.
But it seems to me that Socialism and Fascism are closely related ideologies, the main difference being their positioning along the internationalist/nationalist axis. For example, Mussolini had been one of Italy’s top Socialist leaders and I think the same may have been true of Mosley in Britain. Or just consider the full name of Hitler’s political party. Then again, I’m also no expert on ideological history.
Incidentally, there was another long and interesting piece about LKY in today’s WSJ, written by a very notable Asia scholar:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/lee-kuan-yew-the-man-who-remade-asia-1427475547
Which is why I respectfully disagree. I’m aware of a large number of original cultural inventions, even though I’m no expert on Japan.
It’s also not at all obvious that the Japanese are more creative than Koreans or Han Chinese.
I’d hold off judgment and wait for further research.
I don’t think East Asians are more creative than Europeans in general. But it doesn’t strike me as implausible that the Japanese might be more so than the Hungarians.
As you note, Hungary has had ties to Western European culture for centuries and was even ruled by a Western regime. I would imagine that Japan under similar circumstances would have produced more than Japan actually did in isolation and in the Sino cultural sphere. And while they likely wouldn’t have reached overall European levels of output, it doesn’t seem implausible that they might have reached levels comparable to or even surpassing Hungary.
Singapore’s conception of “family” is a traditional two-parent, high investment household. Such families aren’t going to have lots of kids in a densely populated city.
Singapore has a large foreign resident population, but a lot of these are transient professionals, rather than immigrants. The demographic composition of the citizenry has remained basically the same since independence. That’s not the case with London, where the English are a minority and the foreign are mainly immigrants.
I think the US has a good record when it comes to solid state electronics. Every major advance from the transistor to integrated circuits has had an extremely significant part of it’s development in the US.
Of course if your idea of “creativity” is only limited to cartoons or “art”.
Oh wait we also had Walt Disney.
Real definition of “non savant” creativity is “capacity to do combinations of unusual things ( “stuff”), create new “things” in many different domains and have unusual thinking to produce new theories”.
The myth about “complete” superiority of east asians in intelligence is very recent, because iq and scholastic scores. By archicteture comparison, about “know history”, Paris is superior in beauty than all great cities of east today. “Burma” capital can compete very well with french capital, dispise poverty, but Paris is complete in beauty. Other little example of a single european genius make a all difference.
Most of cognitive elite of east asians, in general, tend to be “high achievers” AND this type of gifted aren’t original creators ( or thinkers) or are creators of “humble” inventions, like improve a product than create a completely new product. The creative achievement of east asians, with relative japanese exception, is few compared with europeans. You need accept it. The chineses of Lao Tse era change and today, instead enormous demography, they are not producing equally enormous creative achievements even in tolerant and open regions like Anglo-saxon Amurrica. And look to jews, only 15 million them.
Santoculto
So an anonymous commenter thinks – without giving any reasons for his thinking – that it’s plausible. Let me digest that information to see how it could affect me.
Maybe, but it’s pure speculation. If you think being an island far away from everything only had disadvantages, then probably you know very little Hungarian (or, for the matter, Japanese) history.
That would be an impressive if carbon dioxide were actually the primary greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, but it isn’t. Water vapor is far more important and it’s concentration is completely independent of human activity. This is why IPCC implicitly tweaks it’s model to have water vapor “amplify” the effect of rising CO2, carbon dioxide can’t do much by itself, regardless of how much it is in the atmosphere at any moment. Furthermore a greenhouse is not a relevant model for the atmosphere because within a closed greenhouse the atmosphere is not mixing like it does in the actual atmosphere of Earth. The models are simply a bunch of guesses, no matter how much you claim otherwise.
You mean to tell me water vapor is a greenhouse gas??? That’s a new one. Pause. NOT!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
” So new cars face exorbitant taxes so that only the superwealthy can afford them.”
Its true that they add taxes and requirements- buying an official certificate of entitlement that costs as much as the car, etc- but its still within the reach of the middle to upper middle class if they truly want it. To put it in perspective, its still less expensive than a home, but we don’t think of these as being unattainable by the middle to upper middle classes if they truly want it.
The govt wants few people to own cars so there will be less traffic, pollution, etc. They provide excellent transportation resources, so you don’t really need a car.
I agree that this is all speculation.
I don’t think being isolated only has disadvantages, but having ties to a wider culture at the height of creative achievement can open up avenues for similar creative effort and output. For example, the Japanese weren’t making movies when they were isolated, but since establishing ties with the West and developing a domestic cinema industry, their cinema has been appreciated by Western filmmakers. Hungarian cinema hasn’t had he same impact, despite being a much less exotic and more accessible culture. Bela Tarr is somewhat influential, but he’s still fairly obscure.
The Japanese do about as well in mathematics relative to their population as most European countries.
Jeez, it never ends, does it?
” This kind of severe, impartial justice is all but unimaginable under Putin,”
And absolutely impossible under either the Obama or Bush or Clinton Regimes.
Here’s a measure of Lee Kuan Yee’s success:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city
A global city, also called world city or sometimes alpha city or world center, is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system.
Every ranking includes Singapore in the top ten most economically important cities on Earth (3,5,5,6,6,9). Averaging the rankings the top 6 cities are:
New York
London
Paris
Tokyo
Hong Kong
Singapore
Another measure of Singapore’s success:
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/03/pisa-results-country-best-reading-maths-science
It is remarkable that Singapore attains this high ranking with malays and indians constituting 25% of it’s students.
Yet another measure of Singapore’s success:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
homicide rate per year per 100,000 inhabitants:
Singapore: 0.2
China: 1.0
Malaysia: 2.3
India: 3.5
World Average: 6.2
Singapore has the lowest murder rate of any nation. At the other extreme is Honduras with a murder rate of 90.4
Again, this record is achieved in a multi-ethnic society.
Since we’ve digressed a bit to creativity and countries. Anyone have an explanation for why Finns and Belgians are the outliers in NW Europe? Why are they the uncreative countries in a very creative region?
I was referring to the models using water vapor to enhance the effect of carbon dioxide, something rarely acknowledged publicly by supporters of AGW, and that this “amplification” by water vapor is needed to make the computer models of the climate work out, except the models aren’t showing the predicted warming. I didn’t claim that you didn’t know it, merely that it is the most important factor in the so-called greenhouse effect, and the fact that it’s quantity in the atmosphere isn’t determined by human activities.
If CO2’s effects are only realized by water vapor enhancing it, and climate isn’t showing the predicted response and water vapor isn’t determined by human activities, how important can CO2 really be to climate on it’s own? You might also want to discuss fluid mechanics which I did mention in the previous post and makes a complete hash of comparing Earth’s atmosphere to an actual greenhouse which prevents air convection. Unfortunately for you, it will require you to furiously search the web for more anonymous posts to link to because you can’t be bothered to actually explain it yourself.
I await your next self-congratulatory snide response that doesn’t address anything I said.
Lee Kwan Yew had 2 sons, namely: Mr Lee Hsien Loong (Current Prime Minister of Singapore) & Mr Lee Hsien Yang. There you have it
Excuse Panda, but I can’t hold anymore…lol
,
Where did I argue for “complete” superiority of EAs?
BTW, it’s not that “very recent” either, as you might want to read some classic Han literatures from 2,000 years ago.
So you’re the subjective world authority on architecture then?
When has “Burma” become the epitome of EA architecture design?
…and obviously you haven’t been to “vibrant” Paris for some ages now, have you?
So you’re a Euro supermacist?
“creators of “humble” inventions ?
Give Panda some hard evidences then, instead of empty words? Perhaps you’d like to check out WIPO total patents per country and patents per capita for the last 10 years, alongwith the trend analysis for the next 10 years?
The keyword is “is”, not “was”, not “will be”. I tend to agree with you on this to some extend, but “with relative Japanese exception”??
FYI world’s current most inventive country/region (measured by WIPO patents per capita) is most likely humble Taiwan, leading by quite some margin!
The world have been in Anglo-era for the last 200 years at least. Amurrica is a part of it. So? Have you read Panda’s “Civilisational Confidence” theory? That’s my point.
15 million Jews are a part of European Civilisation, taking full advantage of this Anglo -era we’e in hence the full blown “Civilisational Confidence” as well.
Singapore and Hong Kong have lagged behind the other successful confucian nations in the creation of global brand names. Japan of course has the lion’s share of asian brand names (in cars, cameras, electronics) and South Korea has Samsung, Hyundai, LG. China is catching up with Ali Baba, Xiomi, Huawei. Taiwan has HTC, Foxconn, Acer. What widely recognizable brand names have Singapore and Hong Kong created?
Well, Singapore can still boast of having the #3 ranked airline in the world: Singapore Airlines.
http://www.worldairlineawards.com/Awards/world_airline_rating.html
The World’s Top 100 Airlines – 2014
1 Cathay Pacific Airways
2 Qatar Airways
3 Singapore Airlines
4 Emirates
5 Turkish Airlines
6 ANA All Nippon Airways
7 Garuda Indonesia
8 Asiana Airlines
9 Etihad Airways
10 Lufthansa
Btw, there are 3 surprises on that list (for me):
Remarkable.
I think there’re at least 3 reasons for that:
population size of Singapore and HK can hardly support indigenous world class brand names in semi-conductor industry which is the world’s most competitive industry, because it requires the support of a humongous amount of sustained hard science R&D power, industrial specialists and manufactoring sub-value chains.
specialisation: tiny Singapore and HK are specialised in being financial centres/ transport / trading hubs, rather than , for instance, private banking/pharma/specialised machinaries that tiny Swizterland concentrates on.
IQ: despite having some of the highest avg IQ, Singapore and HK are actually midgets, both in IQ quality and IQ quantity, comparing to the top X percentile of their giant EA brothers and even some sizeable euro economies dedicated on semicon/consumer electronics.
5 Chinese-related entities took part in PISA maths, endng up taking the top 4, well, almost top 5 with “Casino” (Macao) being edged over by Korea. So the Japanese raw maths power is clearly weaker than the Chinese. This is not a surprise.
Made-in-Japan’s world-dominating high tech brand name is based on 3 things:
much earlier industrialisation relative to the rest of EA thanks to a series of historical coincidences
uninterrupted industrialisation and knowledge/skill accumulation from late 19th century right up to now without any real competitor in the EA on high tech, mainly thanks to Chíng Dynasty’s failure to reform and Chinese Nationalists’ loss to Mao, hence Japan has since become a US economic protectorate and a democracy after WWII, finishing both WWI and WWII almost unscrached opposite to the rest of EA.
on top of high IQ, Japanese national traints of paying extreme attention to details (perhaps influenced by Japan’s historically isolated geography) and extreme level of discipline & family honour (influenced by Confucius), make it ideal for high-tech research & manufactoring, hence the fame of Made-in-Japan.
Moseley had been a prominent Labour politician. Fascism and socialism are indeed bedfellows.
Shook LKY’s hand at a function in Moscow, fans across Eurasia, including at the highest levels in Russia.
Lol… Panda have many problems in the capacity of interpretation.
Again you, the Panda, accuse me to be what you are????? Your biutiful Chaina, eat, cat and fetus eaters, are one of the most polluted, authoritarian, boring land on humanized Earth and with horror taste for architecture. “ok, Ching ling, go down ugly old Beijing to build ugly new Beijing”.
You have good memory??? Because i already show you how your kind chaina is “superior”.
Lol, ching ling supremacist, you are jewish Blind too??? You think without jews, West couldn’t be more developed and dynamic than boring Asia??
As you love to talk about distant past i go refresh their memory about vibrant mongol hordes that rape the “chainaland”.
Buddhism were invented in India and China coppy it??
Caucasoids “are” beasts but they have produce a lot of know civilization than east asians and not only the anglo-era.
I wrote the way that i want, ideas and arguments are better than perfect vocabulary and boring ideas.
You continue repeat the same arguments since Evo et Proud blog, remember???
Show me that chinese people of Tang dynasty are the same than today.
They aren’t and it is a most fundamental inconsistence your argumentation.
Santoculto
Cool story bro.
So what is your point? Do you think if a small part of Japan (with only ten million Japanese inhabiting it, but 300,000 Japanese, mostly from the upper and upper middle classes fleeing from it) would have been occupied by the USSR in 1945, its cinematic output would have been in any way comparable to that of US-occupied 100,000,000+ Japan? If not, why did you bring up this particular example, when cinema is an industry with enormous economies of scale, where large countries have huge head starts (and Japan is population-wise larger than any white European or Western country except for Russia and the US), and which – like most other consumer industries – is highly impacted by the communist system, and I dare say in a negative way?
For the record, Béla Tarr’s movies are quite shitty, that’s a fact all non-snobbish people know well in Hungary. Japan’s movie industry is certainly a good example of Japanese creativity, but as is obvious, it cannot be compared to the outputs of smaller countries, especially not to small countries which spent most of the time since 1945 under the Soviet yoke.
The Singapore press isn’t free, at all. Anti-regime reporting entails immediate poverty, if not worse.
Speaking out to foreign reporters carries the same risk.
On the other hand, the elections are not faked. And the security organs are half manned by conscripts. Thus, the PAP regime can only go so far in oppressing people.
It’s all good. The PAP elites are rather good at delivering an excellent lifestyle to the Singaporean masses. Much better than most actual democracies.
PAP has been cunningly calculating in ensuring that immigration serves to re-inforce the population ratio of 80% beer-swilling but essentially socially-conservative Han chinese, similar Malaysian Malays, and similar Tamils/Hindus.
For example, it is EXTREMELY unusual for a Filipino/Indonesian to be granted Permanent Residency. They are given Work visas. And allowed to re-up them as long as they keep their noses basically clean. Example: shipyard-welder arrested for saturday night drunk fighting at a Lucky Plaza bar? A fine and a black mark on their record. But, writing diatribes against the government in the local Tagalog newspaper letters-to-editor? Quite likely to be on a flight back to Manila in less than 24 hours.
If Greyhound bus company was allowed to open up an airline which had the right to hire 19-year old filipina & thai beauty pageant winners to be Stews, then send them back to country of origin at age 28 in favor of new young-hires….. Greyhound would also look remarkable.
Lol… Then a lot of failure chinese dynasty since XVII???
I agree that smart and wise cognitive “elites” ( CAN) to do all differences. Compare diminute Barbados with Spain.
Its theory about “civilisational” confidence… Same than “vicious circle”???
Then, chinese “civilisation” is depressive about itself since a long long time.
Santoculto
Those are fair points and I did say that this is speculative. And I agree that historical circumstance and population size have to be taken into consideration.
A Japan occupied by the USSR would have isolated it from the wider cinematic culture. As I said above, having ties to a wider culture at the height of creative achievement can open up avenues for similar creative effort and output. This seems to have been the case with Japan and cinematic culture in the 20th century. While Hungary was isolated from cinematic culture in the 20th century. On the other hand, prior to communism, Hungary wasn’t so isolated and had ties to this culture at the height of creative achievement.
Tarr’s films may be shitty or not, but he does have some renown in the wider cinema world.
I think they’re benefitting from lax labor laws in more than one way. They can pay much less, maintain much better discipline, and yeah, as you write, they can keep practices deemed discriminatory in the West (like hiring mostly good-looking flight attendants). It must be noted that they also keep a very high professional level among their crews.
Besides they are probably getting cheaper fuel. In fact, I think the whole idea of starting these airlines was that fuel is abundant and cheap in the Middle East and so it’s better to export it together with some extra value added rather than just the oil itself. So it was decided that they’d export transportation services, because the location was quite suitable for that.
It’s interesting to note that most of their pilots are white Europeans (probably including Americans etc.) as well as most of their top management, so Arabs’ only role is to provide capital and cheap fuel, it’s just putting their capital to some use, which might not be totally sustainable after oil is gone, but it could probably be kept running way longer than oil export itself, because proportionally they generate much more revenue per barrel of oil than simple oil exports.
I believe your reason #2 (specialization) is the correct answer. Both Singapore and Hong Kong specialize as financial, trading and transportation hubs while South Korea and Taiwan specialize in manufacturing.
Lee Kuan Yew must have seen Hong Kong (also a british colony) as his role model, while the former japanese colonies South Korea and Taiwan modeled themselves after Japan. Japan in turn had borrowed more from the germans than from the british when it started modernizing a century earlier.
And before 1945 Hungary produced one STEM Nobel, one first-rate composer (#31 on Murray’s list) (or even two, if we consider #9 Franz Liszt Hungarian) and was pioneering railway electrification, but then between the world wars Hungary was developing more slowly due to losing two thirds of its territory (kinda disruptive for economic development to suddenly lose important railway lines and the customs union of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy), and then came WW2 and the almost half century long Soviet occupation.
Japan around 1900 had something like three and around 1940 five to eight times the population of Hungary (depending how you count Hungary’s borders, which suddenly expanded 1938-41, and then contracted back in 1944-45, but those were war years), today it has a population over twelve times that of Hungary. I’ve already mentioned the effects of brain drain, one Nobel laureate from the period was born to Hungarian parents in Austria (I’ve already mentioned later examples in my previous posts), which might be something if you’re evaluating East Asian vs European (and specifically Hungarian) genetic predisposition to creativity (which was the original topic).
I’m also not sure how much a first rate composer is worth relative to a STEM Nobel laureate, not to mention how to calculate the complications of population sizes (or how to count the physics Nobels awarded to multiple people, like in 2008), or how to take into account relative linguistic isolation (bigger countries tend to have many more people majoring in their languages and so many more translations will happen of literary works, and timelier ones, not several decades later, as is the case with the works of Márai for example).
I won’t comment on this topic any more.
Exports are what you do when you want to ===turn a profit in the face of unused OTHER opportunities to deploy the capital====.
None of us has real access to the complete financial story of Etihad or Qatar airlines. On the other hand, there are quite a few countries which have similar access to what UAE and Qatar have – and they did NOT chose to run an (apparently) loss-leader airline for the sake of establishing a prestigious international name-brand, in the face of the world otherwise thinking that they are still just a bunch of tribals who stumbled into some nouveau riches.
Say for example – Venezuala. They’ve got rather beautiful women to brag about. Which part of Qatari culture rates bragging about?
Where are the Venture Capitalists who are trying to gain an equity position in Etihad? If they don’t exist, then probably there’s a reason.
PS: I have seen, with my own eyes, Etihad’s gigantic campus across the highway from Abu Dhabi airport. A gated completely self-contained community of non-Emiratis.
the gulf Arabs have been merchants since time im-memorial. They don’t leave any dirhams on the table when it comes to paying Cebu girls just enough to keep them around. The workers are treated rather well; but ya know…. so are steers in a feeding lot. Both are working assets and do receive cost-appropriate maintenance. For example, the Emir of Abu Dhabi holds plenty of (relatively) low-salaried Pakistani and Manila physicians of fairly-good caliber.
PS: the REAL bingo prize for one of these Cebu girls is the opportunity to mingle with eligible-bachelor western men of means.
Lee Kwan Yew was dyslexic??
Santoculto
The original topic was also about specific subsets, such as Singaporeans and Japanese.
I think there’s enough evidence to suggest a greater genetic predisposition to creativity among Europeans relative to East Asians. The question then would be distribution, variation, degree of difference, etc. It may be the case that every subset of Europeans is more creative than every subset of East Asians. It doesn’t seem that implausible to me that there may be a subset or subsets of East Asians that is comparable to or perhaps even more creative than a subset of Europeans.
Mr. Karlin refers to patents granted per capita as a rough proxy for innovation (something I’ve used as well in my other comments over the years). Here are the numbers current as of 1998:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Patents-granted
I suspect (based on economic activity, investments in science, and such) that the East Asian numbers are higher today than was the case in 1998.
Although genes contribute some explanatory power, I would speculate that there are other factors that lead to societal-level explosion of innovation that are environmental and historical. If you looked at these numbers in 1950, I would posit that Japanese and South Korean numbers would be much, much lower, likely nonexistent in the case of South Korea. Obviously their people haven’t changed all that much in 50 years, but their environment and historical trajectory has. One trip to the advanced scientific research facilities in Japan and South Korea would quickly disabuse one of the notion that they are somehow not as innovative as Europeans today.
I had a chat with a pharmaceutical company chemist the other day, and got into race of course.
He said that the Chinese are the hardest race for which to develop drugs. He said they are the most different from Whites. (I don’t know if he included other Asians, but he said “Chinese.”
I understand that most brains of all people tend to be either more mathematical and visual-spatial, or verbal -comprehension. I further understand that East Asians are largely on the mathematical side, not the verbal.. I don’t know what the proportions are within the race for Whites or other races, but I would suspect that Whites are fairly close to 50-50.
The “inscrutability” tag long associated with the East is probably due to a minimalist expressiveness, or what we call “personality.” I never see a robust and excited exchange between Chinese, and I am surrounded now by them in Silicon Valley. I also have a Chinese stock broker.
The gossip from people I talk to who work in Silicon Valley… all say the same thing, that the Chinese lie, cheat and steal, to put it bluntly. My experience is that they are rude, both as drivers, and in public interaction, like at my gym. They seem to be out of it, to put it simply.
The mathematically inclined brain is not much interested in ‘soft’ and multi-faceted matters, from social life generally, to the “humanities” (which used to be humane, but are now dominated by crazy people on a mission from the god of Equality).
I have asked two Chinese younger women why one sees a lot of Asian women with White guys. They both said the same thing, and another that i remarked all of this stuff to agreed: “White guys treat you better. With Asian men it is all business.”
I also notice that Chinese women give me a lot of attention, a blue of eye, and blonde and relatively attractive male. The singular unattractiveness of Chinese and many other Asian males is remarkable. The Chinese gals are pretty aggressive on the sex front, at least toward white men. Trying to make a better deal. (reminds me of the Lenny Bruce story, after his gig at the Hungry I club in north beach SF, he would go over to his local Chinese restaurant. Bruce had recently separated from his wife or girl friend, “Honey.” He enters the restaurant and the Chinese waiter says hello and “Whea you lovely wife?” Bruce replies that they have separated. Chinese waiter returns: ah you better off.) This is the kind of Sensitivity of these characters. Also reminds me of a movie a long time ago with Yves Montard (?) where he asks some very square Japanese after they make some dumb remarks, Are you Belgian?)
A while back there was a piece here on rice culture vs. wheat culture, I concluded that the regimentation necessary for rice agriculture resulted in collectivism, etc. Whites were never collectivized in this way (with a handful of exceptions to keep the nay-sayers quiet).
My experience with the Chinese is very negative. A White Nationalist friend in Vancouver, BC told me several years ago that a Chinese buddy of his told him that the table talk at home is often about “how dumb Whites are for letting us in.” Vancouver is about half Chinese now I think. (there is a clever word-play on this theme, Chancouver or something.)
I have always been struck by White numbers guys, bean counters as the lech Clinton termed them, who are generally not much fun. No grab-ass for them, no motorcycle racers, no big-mouths among them. No social or political theory.
So, now we got the Chinese. Big mistake. They are soooo one-dimensional. Zombies born and bred to pursue only money, magical thinking like gambling, grazing on shark-fins and rhino horn elixirs to harder their dicks for about the only recreational activity they can imagine.
They are going to be more alien than any other race….to us. We understand Blacks, we understand Mexicans (who by and large are pretty friendly) and as for Arabs/Persians, we sort of understand them. I don’t understand Chinese. They are zombies to me, harmless but irritating at the personal level but at the political level, like the Vancouver deal, a threat. Can I say, existential threat without getting clobbered for deploying a silly word?
So, the Brave New Worlders stumble along with their blinders on. Look Ma, no Discrimination.
Joe Webb
This makes me doubt everything you write.
YouTube is your friend. Look up “Chinese argument.”
I already talked about it. Compare very different cultural context of white europeans and yellow or light brown east asians today is a slightly stupid thing to do.
If east asian nations were not copying every part of battered western nations today i could accept that creative collective capacity of yellow light brown epicanhtic people is the SAME or very near than pseudo-albinos of far-west asia, but is not in many different aspects.
it ain’t culture folks, it is race. It is way beyond slightly stupid on your part, it is fatally stupid to drag out the Culture card.
Culture, per the micro as in Minnesota Twin studies that have reported on the differences between identicals separated at birth and raised in relatively differing environments …. zero difference in outcomes, or at the macro level with regard to civilizations….the Chinese have close to zero altruism, ditto other Asians.
One thing they have is logic. I have reported to a couple of Chinese gals that the only race that saves the whales, etc. is Whites. They both said, right , we don’t save whales, etc. And they do not feel at all ashamed of it, which is part of their genomic tendency, or are they ashamed of rhino horn, or shark fin ,or, is it Tiger penis?? as well, for their sexual get-up and go, or so they magically think.
I recall locally here in California a Chinese activist was getting a movement going to prohibit shark-fin (I think it was) imports , Very Bad public relations in animal loving White California. Of course Dog fighting is a mexican deal, and the Chinese merely eat them but I understand that the slaughter is done by qualified folks, and is painless.
.One of my , call it “heuristic” devices is to posit that the Chinese and Asians generally have never invented free speech, never will , and logically, they and other Others (all Others who have never invented free speech, do not deserve to use it in the home of Free Speech, Europe derived states.
This is approximately what the ancient Greeks did. Of course, they were slightly stupid too.
Ad hominem when you are without an argument. I notice that besides the psychological factor of resistance, the , ahem, stupidity factor also enters into it when the going gets tough. Hitting the wall , that is, without words or ideas, is this factor. You guys( and I guess the twinkie is a female), twinkie for the Dan White defense a few decades back, need to eat some protein and fat for your cognitive functions. Nothing however will help your emotionalism; it is just genetic, especially for the gals and the girlie-men who pamper them.
Joe Webb
I just lost a comment or something else. In brief I stated that some of you folks just cannot live without the Eternal Copout: Culture. I hear that word mouthed by the generally stupid, speaking of stupidity. I heard a black clerk at the post office explain what was wrong with his colleague, a Chinese guy who was devoid of social skills.
Minnesota Twin studies have laid to rest the culture argument in their identical twin studies. This is at the micro level.
At the macro level, take China , please. CommunistCapitalistPoliceStateCollectivist, etc. It will never change. Oriental Despotism, as Karl Marx termed really the rest of the world. Exempt from the Laws of History.
China will never change, it has never changed, it has only adopted another totalitarianism. Feudal is the general sense of it, with apologies to Uncle Karl.
Beyond stupidity is you folks’ foolishness in claiming that Culture trumps race , anywhere, but especially in the East.
when I hear the word culture, I take out my genes, or HBD, or evolutionary psychology, or whatever you want to call it…Darwin.
When you lack the intelligence to come up with words, ideas, examples, just start the ad hominems….that ought to do it.
joe Webb
test jw
In science, it’s a poor practice to have a conclusion already in your mind and then go around looking for evidence (if at all). That attitude tends to color at what (and how) you look.
I worked and lived in East Asia extensively. I can tell you that countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore (I know, technically SE Asia, but with a large majority of East Asian people), and Taiwan are “not copying every part of battered western nations” today.
Since the East had been behind Western Europe in the past three hundred years or so, they are playing catchup in many ways. Some things from the West they are imitating, other things they are improving/refining, other things still they are rejecting, yet other things they are coming up with on their own. And all of East Asia is not uniform. Although there are some similar trends, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Singaporeans, and the Taiwanese all have their own cultural and societal idiosyncracies and development patterns.
The overaching driver of Singapore’s success was that Chinese dominated Singapore had nowhere to go but up after the separation from Malay dominated Malaysia. This accounts for a lot of the authoritarianism, since Singapore is just a trading city dependent on the goodwill of foreigners. As it happened the rise of Singapore coincided with the Pax Americana and the Japan co-Prosperity Sphere v2.0 , both of which Singapore rode to enormous success . The old man’s fear of endless racial conflict haunted much of his moves. (Communism in Singapore for example could easily tap in to the sympathies of some of the Chinese.) Just as I suppose the peoples of Hong Kong and Taiwan were driven to their success by the fear of Communism. Even if we were a lot poorer, the problem of the races would remain, one might as well get as rich as possible and buy time for amelioration. I am an Indian myself and am very grateful for the peace that I and all of us have enjoyed for some 50 years largely through the inspiration and work of the late, great Lee Kuan Yew.
”I worked and lived in East Asia extensively. I can tell you that countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore (I know, technically SE Asia, but with a large majority of East Asian people), and Taiwan are “not copying every part of battered western nations” TODAY”
You already the question.
”I worked and lived in East Asia extensively. I can tell you that countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore (I know, technically SE Asia, but with a large majority of East Asian people), and Taiwan are “not copying every part of battered western nations” today.”
You no need to say because i know, but east asian inovation, seems based on little-to-average c (creativity) than pioneer revolution of euro-native-caucasians (C). Again, why East Asian country copy industrial revolution** No creative, sorry. Why East Asian countries depredate their historical heritage** No creative, sorry. Why they aren’t creating new original cultures** No creative, sorry. Well, most part of europeans seems not so creative, because creative genius (artistic, philosophic, cultural, scientific…) are rare, but this rarity seems less among them.
”And all of East Asia is not uniform. Although there are some similar trends, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Singaporeans, and the Taiwanese all have their own cultural and societal idiosyncracies and development patterns.”
Obviously, i know about it, but the cultural differences among them is very slightly compared with europeans. Look at only to France and Italy, two very similar countries in many cultural traits and very different in others… but, i think the fact that China have a greater united territory and Europe is fragmented in many little countries is a positive argument to explain more european diversity than east asian…
… but, number two, greater geographical disparity between East Asia and Europe (only China is quasi- the same surface than East and Western Europe) is a negative argument to justify comparative lack of cultural diversity in China (eat dog, cat or not, that is question!!!) based only in environmental or circunstancial reasons because greater territory is good to diversify culture and peoples, but fundamental racial background seems very important too. This dynamics between populations and territories, explain partially well, why europeans are genetically and fundamentally ”more creative”, or, have more collective traits that produce proportionally higher creative castes.
Genetic diversity decreases with increasing geographical and ecological distance from human origins in Africa. Thus East Asians, and Mongoloids more generally, have lower genetic diversity than Europeans, and black Africans have the highest.
I’m not sure how much this explains though, as northern Europeans have less genetic diversity than southern Europeans.
do I get in on this or am I modulated out? last couple trys did not make the cut.JW
Joe Webb: I never see a robust and excited exchange between Chinese… They are zombies to me
Twinkie: YouTube is your friend. Look up “Chinese argument.”
You won’t see that many extroverted and enthusiastic arguments among Chinese because they are not, as a rule, particularly extroverted or enthusiastic (as opposed to grave or calm).
You will see many irritable arguments among Chinese because they are, as a rule, no less irritable.
am I 86ed here? My missives are not getting published. Joe Webb
so, maybe the electronics are to blame.
But if I am expelled , it would be nice and White to announce that I have been so thrown out.
Or, is it the Orwellian memory hole for Joe Webb?
Is this fastly becoming a sub yet nastier forum of Stormfront, Panda wonders? Why bother answer uneducated, rude, nasty, and lying-to-the-teeth remarks from Santoculto(“culto”? really? and santo? how friggin ironic! lol) and Joe Webb, while instead you(and renewed Panda) can engage with some other much more polite, honest , or at least intellectually matured, commenters?
On IQ:
one of “Panda’s Mellenieum Questions” posed to HBD community worldwide is that:
Will you please show Panda the formula/theory/rationale that 1 verbal IQ point must = 1 spatial IQ point? Thank you very much!
If you happen to have no shred of clue on that while arguing “creative power” with a straight face as if it grew naturally out of someone’s biceps, OOPS…!
Perhaps you may want to check out the patents per capita granted to Taiwan?
Since Taiwan is not recognised as an official member of WIPO or other world bodies of patents, it doesn’t count in any official patent ranking. But you can get Taiwan’s total patent numbers from the US Patents Office, then divide them by Taiwan’s population.
Taiwan seems to have the highest per capita patents in the world for some years now, much higher than Japan and Korea, if my memory doesn’t fail me.
https://youtu.be/ShHakZOV2Tc
Singapore story in BBC documentary, Jim Rogers is in it.
Anti-immigrant mentality or anti-newcomers is universal. But Jim Rogers answer is on the mark.
Singapore was a British colony decades before Hong Kong. As of the 1960’s, Singapore and Hong Kong were neck-and-neck. Both served as entrepots to regional hinterlands – Hong Kong to China and Singapore to Malaya and Indonesia.
That may be related to the way in which cookie cutter high rise apartment buildings are associated in the West with crime-ridden government-built slums.
And yet Singapore is so much cleaner than Hong Kong.
Northern China is mostly flat plains. The only notable physical barriers inside China are a couple of major rivers that essentially bisect China (which is why Northern and Southern China were frequently divided in history) and mountains to the west.
Europe has many more physical barriers that encourage political fragmentation – numerous mountain ranges and rivers (it also has a large body of water that aids communication of knowledge and ideas, the Mediterranean Sea).
China is more “monolithic” than Europe not because the Chinese are inherently more monolithic than Europeans, but because the Chinese topography encouraged centralization and made the Chinese that way.
Don’t forget that there is a mutual and constant feedback between genetics, environment, and culture.
In contrast, due in part to geography and accidents of history, Koreans have managed to resist a thousand invasions in the past two thousand years and remain a distinct people apart from the much more numerous and powerful Chinese (as did the Japanese islanders).
am I 86ed here, not able to get on? maybe it is my server which is having trouble.
I notice that China is back in the news with its large spy network in the US.
I repeat, the ad hominem option is the first resort of those without ideas or arguments. Joe Webb
AK: No you’re not banned, censored, or 86ed. I have no control over the decisions of the spam filter.
Dogmatic yellow, never accept facts which are opposite about their irrational ( unilateral) beliefs about their own “race”.
No creative, sorry!!
Santoculto
I think this environmental explanation show us PART of puzzle.
Santoculto
Remember that many whites are very conformist too. Those whites who fight by non-human animal rights and existencial dignity are few compared with most white population but if compared with east asian internal proportion of the same real noble environmentalists or other groups, are many. We can to say, greater majority of environmentalists and non-human animal right fighters are euros and liberal jews.
What about the Germans and Swiss? The Germans used to eat dog recently and apparently some Swiss still do, along with cats:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B04E4D9133EE033A25750C2A9609C946697D6CF
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C0CE7DC1531EE3ABC4A52DFB066838E639EDE
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/30205410
Cockfighting is still popular among some whites in the South:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPiPpQTdmvU
Another obvious factor in Singapore’s success is geography. Its strategic, centralised location allows it to function as a major port and stopover point for international freight and airline passengers between Europe, South East Asia and Australasia.
On the negative side, the level of affluence of the average citizen is likely to be significantly checked by the high cost of such things as water, electricity, fresh food and waste disposal. Singapore has to import all its food and water, and even the sand for its beaches has to be shipped in from overseas at significant expense.
That location is shared by Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. They all have suitable ports. The difference is merely that Singapore built up its infrastructure and smoothed out the bureaucracy to the point that using it as the port and stopover point rather than its neighbors was the most painless of the options available. If the Brits and the Dutch had stayed in charge of Malaya and Batavia, the odds are good that Singapore would have been eclipsed with respect to those two functions. But local elites were determined to have their day in the sun, and the rest is history. Note than Hong Kong was an also-ran next to British- and French-administered Shanghai during Chiang Kai-shek’s rule over China. It was only when the Communists took power that Hong Kong came into its own. Point being that there is nothing magical about the location of a given entrepot’s location vs the alternatives several hundred miles away.
Incidentally, in the 13th century, Marco Polo described Hangzhou as “the City of Heaven, the most beautiful and magnificent in the world.”
You sure it’s even the food you eat?
I have to say it: where does culture come from?
Dunning-Kruger effect is best displayed here in comments. lol.
Marco Polo should be exaggerated a lot about their trip into China, like the prole movie Eurotrip about Slovakia. Italians tend to be very dramatic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybgg4H4zTHo
In all, it is clear that China has had its moments of great brilliance and really do not know what the future will allow. But at least for now, and comparing the ratio of brilliance over time, the West shows better. And really do not know how beautiful the old capital of the middle empire was compared to many European cities. What I see is great beauty everywhere, from Spain to Germany, in terms of historical and cultural heritage and I do not see the same in Asian nations and perhaps already be too late, because they have destroyed half of this historical heritage.
Even with all the psychological war against the white Europeans, they are still producing beautiful music, of varying levels, from the grotesque to beautiful. Just one example. The modern Asian culture is at least 30% westernized. This account * ” Even ” in my country, I see exactly what seems to be the big trend in Western countries with Asian diaspora. A large oriental shyness in many creative fields (recreational), as successful academic and socio-economic and some innovations, surprise, by Japanese descent. But still, near the hbd promises about the huge eastern cognitive superiority, in real world today, much lower than expected.
Perhaps the personality factor can play a major role there. See my case, if it were not for my shyness, I could already be successful in any creative field. But that still does not explain all the rest, perhaps individual cases. I do not know, but what I do know is that based only on IQ, school grades and SAT, you guys are not analyzing all the nuances of human intelligence and in fact, even with these data, are not able to analyze and interpret the way holistic and therefore correct what these data are telling us.
I’m not arguing with you. I’m sure he did exaggerate, but he probably didn’t exaggerate completely and did find the city to be at least somewhat impressive. He travelled throughout the Mideast, Central Asia, the East, China and other major Chinese cities such as Beijing, and didn’t seem to praise the other cities as much as he did Hangzhou.
Yes, i know.
So true. It’s also not in their nature to come up with new ideas. Having lived twice in Singapore I know this to be the case. There is no lateral thought so to embrace other’s ideas and just copy/emulate makes so much sense: for them
Lots of places. The population that you’re dealing with, and the environment they’re living in, would be pretty big factors.
Thing is, culture is much more malleable than, say, the genetic components of a population.
When specific populations carry certain traits (as most do), it’s hasty to instantly assume that this is largely (or exclusively) because of their genetic makeup.
I’d really like to know how you arrived at the minimal point of “30%.” Would you please show me the work sheet for this answer?
50% of occidentalized Kultura would be very higher to developed east asian nations NOW, 10-20% is very lower, would be as Japan during period pre-second war or their first industrialization stage. 30% seems near to perfact.
To Ponda:
Brownish, epicanthic dogmatic or nice east asian dogmatic guy. Better??
Santoculto
Some good points. Okay column. But a few points:
1) GDP isn’t wealth as measured by net assets or living standards. Ex: UK & Italy now include drugs, whores, overeating, in their GDP calculations. A more accurate measure is net financial assets per capita. See for ex, Allianz Annual Global wealth reports.
2) Singapore is a first world city in a 3rd world squalor. Unlike Boston, SFr, Paris… Although mass non-white migration is taking us there. Also, due to shallow safety net, singaporeans work harder. Hence 2300h/yr. Further, what is the histogram across workers. Is the lower German & US hrs due to Pareto principle in part?
3) In yellow Asia, Japan was the first to industrialize from 1868. And since Nobel awards began, it has won 19 in sciences. Korea zero, Greater China 8, ASEAN zero, inner-asia (mostly Turkic) zero.
This is because, there is a lag time between wealth acquisition, r&d investmemts and finally awards.
4) culture: is subjective. Singapore is now a fine cuisine paradise. Food is art & culture. There is a determined push to make a center of Buddhism, taoism. High culture comes after 3 or 4 generations of wealth. Ex: most japanese high culture, painting, calligrapgy, prose, came from elite samurai class.
Wait 50 years.
East Asians are not copycats in the most existential questions. Ex: immigration. Is very low in east Asia. And most of that is intra-yellow. Filipinos, vietnamese in Korea, Koreans, Chinese in Japan, etc.
In sharp contrast most immigration in Europe & north america is not intra-white. And the scale is massive. It is non-white and extremely destructive.
JAY man you have not learned how to THINK.
Of course all traits are heritable. A capacity for hard work is heritable. Hard work deadens the emotions. Deadened emotions are thus substantially heritable.
I do not think you are capable of understanding the ideas you try and handle. They are too subtle for you.
An inherited capacity for hard work might be potentiated only under certain circumstances. Thus this human being with dead emotions is exhibiting utterly heritable traits. Yet under other conditions he might be an idle, cheerful fellow.
People just don’t know how to THINK anymore.