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Comment by everybodyknows | Hacker News Reader

A bit hyperbolic, but I think you're on the right track. Here's why, as unintentionally revealed by plain-spoken Charlie Munger:

> “In a democracy, everyone takes turns. But if you really want a lot of wisdom, it’s better to concentrate decisions and process in one person. It’s no accident that Singapore has a much better record, given where it started, than the United States. There, power was concentrated in an enormously talented person, Lee Kuan Yew, ...”

https://fs.blog/charlie-munger-wisdom/

In short, "what you don't want", according to the Munger social vision, is ... democracy. A benevolant dictator it seems, is the only way. But how many aspiring dictators in the long history of this world have proven out as benevolent? The track record of dictators selected by political struggle I would argue is, by any measure of mass welfare, even worse than that of hereditary monarchs.

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I am a reasonably large Charlie Munger fan (read all the bios of him and Buffett, read the Bevelin books, read Poor Charlie's) but the guy has the most phenomenal blind spots of any person alive because, bluntly, he isn't that well-read. He has read very deeply in one area (if you look at his book recommendations, it is like the Amazon best sellers for rich elderly people who went to college in the US, studied sciences but never really thought about anything else) but he appears unaware of the limits of knowledge, and is exceptionally superficial about stuff like politics (the stuff with the UCLA dorm also highlights this, he has written a lot of sensible stuff, and a lot of stuff that would do well in standup).

Plato wrote about all of this stuff, he was of the same opinion (philosopher kings), and then spent most of life finding out why that didn't work (and was, as a result, sold into slavery towards the end of his life). This came up again in the Enlightenment. The perceived fault of democracy is the strength: it is strong because "everyone takes turns". You significantly reduce your upside, but you significantly reduce your downside too. The US has benefitted hugely from founders who not only understood democracy well, but understood the problems with dictatorship.

Also, it is worth saying that LKY's son now runs the country. It isn't a democracy, are we seriously saying that the country was scoured for the best people and it just turned out the best guy was the son of the last guy? Seriously? LKY's achievements were great, he was a great leader but there is a lot wrong with the country (it runs on slave labour) and has the highest level of political weakness possible (China is a perfect parallel: Deng was a great leader, but he didn't solve any of political issues and assumed the CCP would always lead by consensus, Xi has made himself permanent leader...this is why you have a balance of powers/strong constitution, this is exactly why).

> LKY's son now runs the country.

Thanks. Any pointers to sources that actually know something about the real power structure inside Singapore politics? From my scan of several English-language sites there, it seemed only one -- Straits Times -- acknowledged that the country had any internal politics at all:

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/whats-needed...

So, Lee Hsien Loong is LKW's son?

Also this. Wondering if the Progress Singapore Party is a token opposition that's allowed to exist, provided it never threatens to achieve real power, in order to put a fig leaf on the democracy claim?

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/politics/former-candi...

> a balance of powers/strong constitution

Necessary but not sufficient. Support for those values, and a few others e.g. respect for rule of law, willingness to pay taxes, toleration of dissenting opinions, consideration for future generations, is also required, from some significant fraction of the electorate. A certain "political culture". Decay of which I'd suggest is at the root of any democracy's troubles.

Singaporean here.

Opposition does exist in Singapore's politics, and in fact they do get quite a large share of votes (~40% across many constituencies), it's just that due to the first-past-the-post system the number of opposition MPs that make it into Parliament is extremely small, and thus the ruling party has effectively full control over Parliament.

Now this is definitely a clear flaw of the system but things are changing - younger people are more willing to run as opposition candidates and in the most recent election the Worker's Party made some significant wins.

There are a few things I think are important to consider:

1. Credibility of the opposition. Opposition should not exist for opposition's sake. Many opposition candidates are simply... not that impressive. A good example is the Progress Singapore Party you mentioned (it is a new party, not the most representative of the opposition). Their rhetoric comes across as xenophobic and racist primarily against Indian immigration, which frankly seems to just be pandering to middle-aged, Chinese voters. Of course incompetency exists in the ruling party as well but I won't go there.

2. Where do we want to end up? I don't think it's wise to simply rush into "copying" another country's political system. Frankly, I believe that the 2-party system seen in many countries is the "worst case" equilibrium that we should try to avoid falling into. We are now in the midst of the rare process of political change and I don't mind that it happens in slow steps. Let the Worker's Party prove themselves. Let the ruling party take in the lessons from the election and improve themselves or change their policies. It all ultimately works for the improvement of the country which is great news!

3. On the note of not imitating other countries, one thing I am glad to see is emphasis and scrutiny on political integrity. We recently had a case of an MP being caught lying in Parliament and it was taken very seriously. I do certainly hope twitter politics never takes foot here.

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