Hacker News Reader

Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

I would say the opposite - most of countries are more or less on the development level that their culture and geographic location permits, few countries are significantly below this level and fewer still are significantly above this level.

Singapore is exactly where it should be, given its culture, legacy, location, and the fact that it is a city-state. It would still be Singapore under your average ruler (of Chinese culture, not African). It has awesome hand so it does not take much skill to play it.

I could not repeat enough the argument of city-states being different, and usually very rich, so that's what I'm going to do. You should never compare Singapore's GDP growth with any country which has, well, countryside. Still, Taiwan will give Singapore a run on its money while not even being a recognized country.

View on HN

Depending on how you define "city states", it might just be Singapore and a couple of petrostates. Slightly broader definitions give you Malta (average Mediterranean country) as discussed and some middle income Caribbean islands relying on tourists and tax avoiders. That isn't because being a city state is so amazing every city just wished it could shed its hinterland, it's because operating as an independent country with limited domestic food production capacity is hard (even without neighbours wanting to assimilate you)

Sure, cities have higher per capita GDP than their associated agricultural regions, but Singapore's GDP in 1963 was low relative to the agricultural regions of many countries it's since overtaken, its institutions were the colonial power's and much of its population consisted of uneducated coolies performing manual labour and living in squalid conditions. And it initially chose not to be a city state!

The only thing inevitable about Singapore's growth path is that if its first government had bankrupted the country and begged to be British or Malaysian subjects again by 1970, people would have said this wasn't at all surprising given its Asian culture (not so highly rated for business acumen in the 1960s!) and geographical disadvantages...

These are very broad generalizations you're claiming with no evidence.

> Most of countries are more or less on the development level that their culture and geographic location permits.

So, given this assertion, no developing country should ever hope to join the ranks of a developed nation? Unless they change cultural variables or conquer new lands. Yet we see this playing out in Europe and East Asia and now Africa and India.

> Taiwan will give Singapore a run on its money

Singapore's GDP per capita is $70,000 while Taiwan's capital city sits at $35,000.

Please cite your sources

Would Singapore be a genuinely worse place to live if its GDP per capita would be "just" $35,000 instead of $70,000?

It would probably have slighly smaller population, less economic regulation and more sustainability. So the difference between Yew and "number two" is the difference between "Excellent" and "Great".

Come on, is that so important? I'd rather read on about a leader who turned "mediocre" into "pretty good".

Because most countries are not Singapore, they don't have what it takes to be even Taiwan.

"When a Rhino looks at the moon, he wastes the flowers of his spleen", as neither Japanese nor Chinese say.

This is just moving the goalposts and sophistry at this point. Your initial statement was Taiwan was measurably better per capita than Singapore, though the GDP and economic statistics show otherwise. You can also look at various happiness indices, where Singapore is #1 in Asia, since happiness is correlated with GDP per capita.

and If you really believe $70,000 is no different from $35,000, I urge you to donate all your income excess of $35,000 to me. I take Venmo, Cashapp.

This is not moving the goalposts. The goalposts were the unsurpassed wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew. It is still a hipster bullshit if you ask me.

Taiwan was 1.5x worse GDP-wise in 1960 and now the difference is 2.0x. That's not that much. Especially as I have said about city states and whatnot.

I donate significant amount of my income, just not to you obviously.

your first two paragraphs, taken together seem like upside down logic to me, or totally illogical. cart before horse kind of thing.

and that "probably" ... :)

You have to be careful looking at GDP per capita. That money doesn't always stay within the country, especially with tax havens.

Look at Ireland's GDP per capita - it's on par with Singapore! But a lot of that is due to the tax strategies of companies like Google that park their IP in Ireland, then "sell" it to countries in Europe. That's all GDP for Ireland. But what happens to the money? It gets pumped back to the US.

It's similar with Singapore. There are huge refineries, and pharmaceutical manufacturing on the island. The country makes these product (often of high value), which contributes to the GDP. But that money exits the country (save for the workers in Singapore) back to the HQ country.

If you look at median wages in Singapore, you'll get a much better sense of the wealth. But do note that the number the Singaporean government quotes doesn't include the 40% of the population that is migrant workers - it's only Singaporean citizens and PRs. So it ignores the bottom ~40% of workers (save for the highly skill people on work passes).

I'm sorry, but Singapore came pretty close to collapsing in the 1960s, especially just after its expulsion from Malaysia. Just about only thing it had going for it was its geography. The UMNO in Malaysia was banking on Singapore asking to rejoin the federation on significantly more unfavourable terms than the latter got in 1963, after teetering on the verge of complete state failure.

Make no mistake—Singapore's prosperity today is no accident.

Your claim is essentially that cities, and therefore city-states, will naturally fall into wealth and prosperity. I wonder what happened to Athens, Venice, Genoa, and all the other merchant city-states, the equivalents of Singapore on the ancient, mediaeval, and early-modern world.

The hard part about a city-state is retaining its independence. Venice and Genoa got claimed by Italy, Athens became a capital.

And they have fallen into relative obscurity, barring Venice. They're all not big, financial hubs pulling in hundreds of billions to trillions, like New York, or London, or Singapore.

The point is that cities don't accumulate wealth 'just because'. Wealth comes and goes. And this goes all the more for city-states with no hinterland nor strategic depth.

Cities do not, but city states do.

Compare Venice with Monaco in that respect. Or Hong Kong, which is waning because of that lost sovereignity but is still very rich. Or Luxembourg. Or Qatar. It's just great to be a small self-contained free port.

And Venice is not the worst place to be.

Now, we actually do not know what will be of Singapore in 50 years. May be many things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com