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Comment by mtts | Hacker News Reader

The Singapore government an evil regime? Wow.

Yeap. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Singapore elite already has enormous, ever increasing power. Everything is done to destroy all opposition. You must be very naive to think that once a small group achieves a complete control over a country, they will use it for everybody's good.

An absolutely corrupt elite that made their tiny city state one of the most prosperous and stable countries in south-east Asia. Lee Kuan Yew is probably one of my favourite political figures - studying Asian leaders like him, or China's Deng Xiaoping, can be perception-shattering.

I still think democracy is important, but the order of priorities for a country should go something like stability -> rule of law -> economic prosperity -> democracy. If you mix up the order, you're gonna have a bad time.

As for this case in particular, it sounds more like lobbying by the newspaper industry than any campaign to suppress free speech.

That order can sometimes work, but there are a lot of examples of it failing. That was the goal of Portugal's authoritarian "Estado Novo", for example: a strong government that would guarantee stability and the rule of law, and on that basis carefully lead a corporatist economy, together with industry partners, towards a controlled but prosperous society. But in practice it didn't work that well economically, and Portugal's economy benefited from the 1974 overthrow of the regime, i.e. democracy -> economic prosperity.

Ah, interesting! Thanks for the counter-example.

>You must be very naive to think that once a small group achieves a complete control over a country, they will use it for everybody's good.

Yeah you're right. Singapore's dictator totally didn't bring the country from third world to first world, currently ranking top 5 in the world for academic grades, lowest child mortality and GDP per capita PPP, without the help of foreign aid or natural oil resources, in less than 40 years.

Indeed, the trains run on time!

Also, you may not know this but I think you've been hellbanned (your nick is in green)

Green means new user

thanks for the info, I saw someone else with a green nick who apparently was hellbanned in another thread, so I assumed that was the signifier

cheers

Do you have the 'showdead' option on? If not, you shouldn't see posts from hellbanned users.

I apparently do now that I check. But I like seeing posts from the hellbanned

Green means the account is fairly new. However, despite the age of the account I'm not seeing it as green.

Still, don't hell-banned account posts show as [dead] to all but the owner (and even then only to those with "show dead" on)?

Come visit sometime. Those who live here do not seem to think anything is being "destroyed" or even corrupted, and that includes people from America and many other places. We have experienced the alternatives, and Singapore is not worse.

Throw your chewing gum on the ground.

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