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I consider Singapore to be the most dangerous dystopia in the world. It's not even close to the worst place to live. That's not the point. The thing that make

by api 5y ago

I consider Singapore to be the most dangerous dystopia in the world. It's not even close to the worst place to live. That's not the point. The thing that makes it the worst is that it is superficially desirable. It's like refined sugar, a poison that rots your teeth and causes dozens of health problems but tastes fantastic and is marketed heavily to children. Only a lunatic or an idiot would want to emulate North Korea but many sane intelligent and well-meaning people want to emulate Singapore. That's what makes it so horrible. It's a shining beacon of totalitarianism that advertises that wonderful things can be purchased at the cost of human rights. I would rather live, pragmatically, in Singapore than many other countries, but if I were there I'd be fully aware that it's a road to hell. The runner up for this designation is probably Dubai, which is even more of a two-tier Neo-feudal slave state with third world style corruption and only a superficial rule of law.

goboronshka 5y ago
You're getting downvoted because your post is incredibly disrespectful to countries where the main demographics are historically oppressed groups. Obviously North Koreans love North Korea, or else it wouldn't exist.
- eranima 5y ago
  No, he's being downvoted because many here actually WOULD want that.
- Der_Einzige 5y ago
  "Obviously North Koreans love North Korea, or else it wouldn't exist." Do you seriously believe this crap? The OP didn't deserve those downvotes, you did.
coldtea 5y ago
>at the cost of human rights. What human rights exactly?
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
  - jedimind 5y ago
    That was a rhetorical question I suppose, in the sense of "whose definition is supposedly the universal one": Jonas Čeika has philosophical deep dive [0] into the topic of human rights worth watching. [0] https://youtu.be/AhRBsJYWR8Q https://youtu.be/AhRBsJYWR8Q
pphysch 5y ago
Why is it a bad place to live, for someone who isn't part of the 1984 fandom?
everybodyknows 5y ago
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/ 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.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  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).
areoform 5y ago
People are down-voting you. But to them, I'd like to say, how can you read this and not be shocked? > To illustrate how Better.sg tries to diffuse tensions, Keerthi recounted how a dark-skinned, ethnically South Asian member of the group had proposed a project after an interaction that she considered racist. She’d gone to an ethnically Chinese doctor with a dermatological complaint, but he refused to accept her as a patient, saying he couldn’t confidently diagnose conditions on dark skin. She wanted to build a map that collated reports of similar incidents with medical professionals. Keerthi said that he suggested an alternative product: why not build an image library of how skin conditions present on different skin tones, to help doctors out? It feels like they're unwilling to accept, at a very fundamental level, that the issue wasn't that the doctor "can't diagnose X", but rather that they would prefer not to diagnose X. > A digital education plan for the pandemic assumed that all children had access to devices, and that all households had one parent spare to supervise them, he added. That simply wasn’t the case, and lower income families suffered disproportionately. “You can map these dysfunctions and asymmetries onto certain socioeconomic statuses,” Kuah said. This is again one of the more paternalistic aspects of the system at play, they're unwilling to accept anything that falls outside of their "norm," where they — a small subset of powerful people — get to define what is the norm — not the people who live there. > In a country that’s notoriously obsessed with safety, where jaywalking and failing to wear a seatbelt can be punished with jail time, migrant workers can be transported on the expressways in the back of goods vehicles. Calls for change after a series of fatal accidents this year were rejected, on the grounds it would be too expensive for their employers. I find this to be insanely inhuman, anyone who falls outside their preferred norm is the subhuman, or the untermensch. Their existence does not matter. Their concerns don't matter. > The coronavirus burned through the close-packed migrant dormitories. By the end of 2020, more than 150,000 migrant workers, nearly half of them, had been infected, compared to just 4,000 in the general population. > Inside the dorms, the systems seemed calibrated to trigger near-constant lockdowns; each time a positive case is found in a dormitory, its residents are isolated. Eighteen months on, migrants are still largely shut in. They’re only allowed to leave their dormitories to work, or, once a week, for a few hours at a designated recreation centre. > That time [went] very fast… but on the other hand, very slow,” he told Rest of World. “All day we stay in the dormitory, [in the] same room. We cannot go out, [we were] only allowed to go to the toilet and shower. Even cannot go [into the] corridor.” Nights were the worst. Having spent most of the day sitting on his bed, watching movies on his phone, he found it hard to sleep. “This was a very, very bad time,” he said. They've put a group of people, whom they consider to be the untermensch, within group housing where their movement is restricted and they are locked in. There will be some who will make the parallel to lockdowns in the US and the rest of the developed world, but fundamentally, those lockdowns were about sheltering in place at home, applied equally across the population, and gave people autonomy to go out for essential needs etc. This targets a specific sub-population. They are forced to live together in dorms. And they can only access recreation for a few hours every week. That's a prison in all but name. > People have to trust that there are limits to this organizing principle. If the government changed its mind about enforcing the law on homosexuality, for example, “it would be able to subpoena the location data of every queer person in Singapore to see who they’re meeting,” Rajeswari said. “There are jokes in our community about the government having files on us… but they’re morbid jokes.” > In 2020, he was jailed for 10 days for hosting a live discussion via Skype with the Hong Kong pro-democracy figurehead Joshua Wong. It's a "utopia" for sociopaths.

by api 5y ago

goboronshka 5y ago

You're getting downvoted because your post is incredibly disrespectful to countries where the main demographics are historically oppressed groups. Obviously North Koreans love North Korea, or else it wouldn't exist.

eranima 5y ago
No, he's being downvoted because many here actually WOULD want that.
Der_Einzige 5y ago
"Obviously North Koreans love North Korea, or else it wouldn't exist." Do you seriously believe this crap? The OP didn't deserve those downvotes, you did.

coldtea 5y ago

>at the cost of human rights. What human rights exactly?

systemvoltage 5y ago
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
- jedimind 5y ago
  That was a rhetorical question I suppose, in the sense of "whose definition is supposedly the universal one": Jonas Čeika has philosophical deep dive [0] into the topic of human rights worth watching. [0] https://youtu.be/AhRBsJYWR8Q https://youtu.be/AhRBsJYWR8Q

pphysch 5y ago

Why is it a bad place to live, for someone who isn't part of the 1984 fandom?

everybodyknows 5y ago

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/ 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.

hogFeast 5y ago
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).

areoform 5y ago

People are down-voting you. But to them, I'd like to say, how can you read this and not be shocked? > To illustrate how Better.sg tries to diffuse tensions, Keerthi recounted how a dark-skinned, ethnically South Asian member of the group had proposed a project after an interaction that she considered racist. She’d gone to an ethnically Chinese doctor with a dermatological complaint, but he refused to accept her as a patient, saying he couldn’t confidently diagnose conditions on dark skin. She wanted to build a map that collated reports of similar incidents with medical professionals. Keerthi said that he suggested an alternative product: why not build an image library of how skin conditions present on different skin tones, to help doctors out? It feels like they're unwilling to accept, at a very fundamental level, that the issue wasn't that the doctor "can't diagnose X", but rather that they would prefer not to diagnose X. > A digital education plan for the pandemic assumed that all children had access to devices, and that all households had one parent spare to supervise them, he added. That simply wasn’t the case, and lower income families suffered disproportionately. “You can map these dysfunctions and asymmetries onto certain socioeconomic statuses,” Kuah said. This is again one of the more paternalistic aspects of the system at play, they're unwilling to accept anything that falls outside of their "norm," where they — a small subset of powerful people — get to define what is the norm — not the people who live there. > In a country that’s notoriously obsessed with safety, where jaywalking and failing to wear a seatbelt can be punished with jail time, migrant workers can be transported on the expressways in the back of goods vehicles. Calls for change after a series of fatal accidents this year were rejected, on the grounds it would be too expensive for their employers. I find this to be insanely inhuman, anyone who falls outside their preferred norm is the subhuman, or the untermensch. Their existence does not matter. Their concerns don't matter. > The coronavirus burned through the close-packed migrant dormitories. By the end of 2020, more than 150,000 migrant workers, nearly half of them, had been infected, compared to just 4,000 in the general population. > Inside the dorms, the systems seemed calibrated to trigger near-constant lockdowns; each time a positive case is found in a dormitory, its residents are isolated. Eighteen months on, migrants are still largely shut in. They’re only allowed to leave their dormitories to work, or, once a week, for a few hours at a designated recreation centre. > That time [went] very fast… but on the other hand, very slow,” he told Rest of World. “All day we stay in the dormitory, [in the] same room. We cannot go out, [we were] only allowed to go to the toilet and shower. Even cannot go [into the] corridor.” Nights were the worst. Having spent most of the day sitting on his bed, watching movies on his phone, he found it hard to sleep. “This was a very, very bad time,” he said. They've put a group of people, whom they consider to be the untermensch, within group housing where their movement is restricted and they are locked in. There will be some who will make the parallel to lockdowns in the US and the rest of the developed world, but fundamentally, those lockdowns were about sheltering in place at home, applied equally across the population, and gave people autonomy to go out for essential needs etc. This targets a specific sub-population. They are forced to live together in dorms. And they can only access recreation for a few hours every week. That's a prison in all but name. > People have to trust that there are limits to this organizing principle. If the government changed its mind about enforcing the law on homosexuality, for example, “it would be able to subpoena the location data of every queer person in Singapore to see who they’re meeting,” Rajeswari said. “There are jokes in our community about the government having files on us… but they’re morbid jokes.” > In 2020, he was jailed for 10 days for hosting a live discussion via Skype with the Hong Kong pro-democracy figurehead Joshua Wong. It's a "utopia" for sociopaths.