You’ve heard it before. You have probably nodded in assent
each time you have heard it.
Life, you have learned, is a trade-off. You can’t have
everything you want.
It’s a great idea. Mouth it and you will sound like a mature
adult.
And yet, once you start having to make choices—if you get
this you cannot have that—your mind will recoil in horror. Indignantly you will
respond that you should not have to make such choices, and besides, you can
have it all. In fact, you know someone who does. Or, at least you think he does.
Such were my first thoughts as I read Sahana Singh’s article
about the time she and her family spent in Singapore.
With the death of Lee Kuan Yew, the father of modern
Singapore, some media types have been jumping up to explain that while Singapore
is freer than anywhere else when it comes to doing business, it is an
autocratic horror when it comes to personal freedoms and first amendment
rights.
We Americans seem to believe that social customs should
become a free-for-all and that the business world should also be a
free-wheeling free enterprise paradise.
In truth, as Camille Paglia opined, American students have
become world leaders in decadence. She might have mentioned that America can
also be a rather dangerous place. Apparently, college campuses are especially
depraved.
All the while, American free enterprise is being stifled by endless
regulations. American millennials are lagging just about all
of their international peers in measures of competence.
Is that what the world looks like when you don’t make trade offs?
Singh describes her experience of everyday life in Lee Kuan
Yew’s Singapore. In particular, she notes that the Singapore described by Yew’s
detractors—mostly leftists who prefer socialism to free enterprise—is a rank
distortion.
She writes:
From
clean water and crime-free streets to reliable public transportation and easy
access to libraries, the state government anticipates all the basic needs to
provide its residents a good quality of life and eliminate the stresses that
can impede personal progress. But in the coverage that followed the death of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew
on Monday, Western media has painted a very different picture. They describe a crushing autocrat
that chained his people and stripped them of basic freedoms. My experience was
quite the contrary. Outside of this tiny island utopia, I never felt more free.
What was it like for a mother with a baby? Singh describes it:
In my
first days in Singapore, I worried about safely getting around town, especially
with a baby. I had never used local trains and feared ending up in a dangerous
neighborhood. But what would be reasonable fears for a newcomer in most
countries were gratuitous in Singapore. Everywhere were street signs and
directions in English, clearly marked and intelligently placed, as if invisible
planners were anticipating your next question. On my first try, I navigated to
Orchard Road, the nation’s retail hub, and back to my hotel without having to
ask anyone for directions.
There
was no litter in Singapore’s streets. Every building looked clean and every
walkway looked newly washed. The national library hadnumerous branches, stocked with
wonderful books. With my baby in a stroller, I could go practically anywhere.
It was like an India I had always dreamed of: clean, green and hassle-free.
Of course, Singh does not define freedom in terms of Spring
Break or the ability to get high and to pee in public:
There I
was, freer than anytime I had been in my life. I had just found a job I loved.
I could go see a movie with friends and return by myself late at night. I could
fall asleep in a taxi, after reeling off my address, and the driver would
safely take me home and gently wake me up. Singapore maintains an
efficient – if strict – judicial system, fundamental to living in a low-crime
society while practicing individual freedom. I had tasted the real
freedom that came with security.
Singaporeans pay a price for this kind of freedom:
Many
point to the price Singapore’s citizens and residents pay for achieving that
security. The government imposes strict laws with steep fines and
punishments for even minor transgressions: Breaching the ban on selling gum can
fetch a fine north of $70,000. Vandalizing property can lead to caning. These kinds of sentences may be an
affront to American ideals, but in Singapore, like many Asian countries,
ensuring the greater good is paramount to
self-determination. Americans, it should be noted, also pay a price for the premium they put on
individual liberties.
The government of Singapore is certainly autocratic. It does
not respect individual liberties and individual rights. It is decidedly
intolerant of criticism and dissent.
Yet, it allows people from different ethnic groups to live
and work together in harmony. Its schoolchildren regularly outperform America’s
best by all measures of academic achievement. And it has produced the kind of
place where you can bring up a child without being in constant fear. It does
not have gang violence or drug wars. It doesn’t even have transgendered locker
rooms.
Surely, Singapore is not an ideal society. Its people have also
made trade-offs… only the trade offs are different from the ones that we have
made.
Never fear. We'll get our autocratic utopia before the end. The question whether it'll start for or against the oligarchy, but you know it'll end up with the oligarchy.
ReplyDeleteA one-party system must be more efficient. And when you can keep the same leader for 31 years, you surely can make long term plans for success and prosperity.
How long did FDR lead us? We were "so close". Surely it'll be from the left that an autocratic leader will rise, not Obama of course. He was too corporate, and bailed out all the banks and saved baby boomer retirement funds for another decade.
Incidentally, I found a little 6 minute video with speeches with Lee Kuan Yew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrtKZ9OhH0U Lee Kuan Yew Tribute
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As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, Mr. Lee ushered Singapore through independence from Britain, a merger and subsequent breakup with neighboring Malaysia, and a period of explosive racial tensions before turning the Southeast Asian city-state into one of the region’s economic “tigers.” By the time he stepped down after 31 years at the helm, he was the longest-serving prime minister in the world.
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Trade-offs are for the weak. Look at what we Americans have done to our society believing we can have anything and everything because we say so! If we made intentional, calculated trade-offs, we might get our act together.
ReplyDeleteBut no.... we want it all. Isn't that the summary story when you add up the wants and desires of every interest and advocacy group? When you total up all their wants, aren't they collectively playing for an "anything goes" society? A nation where their demands are constant and responsibilities are for "other people."
Perhaps this is why the American elites are turning Leftward. Lefty politicians tell the go-go jetset and indigent entitled they don't have to make any trade-offs. It's FREE! Everything is going to come from the magical government stash. There are no responsibilities, just unmet wants. I want, I want, I want. And we hear that there are the shadowy "mean people" standing in the way of everything WE want (which is newspeak for "What I want"). That's what every political campaign is about today.
We're not having an exchange about where we want to go as a nation, because clear vision demands clear choices, and choice means sacrifice. We're no longer mature enough to make sacrifices, and we pillory anyone who tells us we do. So we get the government we deserve. We live in the land of nice, driven by petty microscopic special interests who definitionally only care about one thing in pursuit of their theoretical wonderland. And ithey don't care a wit about you, your neighborhood, your family or anything else meaningful. Shrill voices declare daily that our nations' justice, goodness and worthiness are all dependent on one thing: whether the special interests and advocacy groups get what they want. Quite frankly, I can't stand listening to it anymore.
Actually, US and the West have been getting more Singaporean with PC, college speech codes, all the rules about where you can smoke, with laws forcing special seats for children in cars, stop and frisk laws, gentrification in big cities, trigger warnings and the mania over micro-aggressions, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe laid-back Bad News Bears 70s are long gone.
Some schools have zero tolerance on silly matters, some forbid soda pop, and some communities arrest parents for letting their kids play outside.
Boomers demanded more freedom but they grew up and their kids grew up, they became more control-freakish than the generation of Archie Bunkers.
http://www.fox4news.com/story/19600642/mom-arrested-for-letting-kids-play-outside
http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/zerostup.html
Nice article
ReplyDeletehttp://www.unz.com/akarlin/lee-kuan-yews-flawed-utopia/