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Comment by toni | Hacker News Reader

Also a recent must-see documentary about Singapore repressive ruling party is Jason Soo's "1987: Untracing the Conspiracy"[1]

[1] http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2016/04/interview-jason-soo-...

"In 1987, 22 people were arrested under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) in a security exercise known as Operation Spectrum.

Accused of being involved in a Marxist conspiracy to establish a communist state, many detainees were tortured and then coerced into implicating themselves and their friends on public television."

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> Accused of being involved in a Marxist conspiracy to establish a communist state, many detainees were tortured and then coerced into implicating themselves and their friends on public television.

Wow! Stalinist tactics against Marxism.

And Singapore shows how much you can accomplish when Marxists are removed from society.

The pendulum has already swung back somewhat: Since the '00s, the ruling party has been quietly ramping up the social safety net (various subsidy programs for the low-income), implemented universal healthcare to an extent (keeping health insurance costs low), and focused a lot on aiding older unemployed citizens (wage subsidies, retraining, upgrading). Government departments focus more on "customer service" and have a "no wrong door" policy.

It's been a gradual moderation since the '90s and before, when things were more uptight and anti-welfare-state. I remember the "OB markers", stuff that was out-of-bounds for public discussion - much of those have been eroded by blogs, forums & social media. So, not Marxism, just a shift away from pure capitalism and authoritarianism.

Even its "pure capitalism" has had a lot of public housing projects, right from the get-go. (And stuff we take for granted like public education.) I think its policies can be derived more from a "no passengers" ethos and the need to react to present living standards and their growth rate.

Sounds like something the US would do.

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