3 ms·
I'm amazed at how many people romanticize ghettoes, dirt, and bums. Breaking and entering, rape, murder, homelessness, and human feces on the street are pretty
by jacoblyles 14y ago
I'm amazed at how many people romanticize ghettoes, dirt, and bums. Breaking and entering, rape, murder, homelessness, and human feces on the street are pretty common in areas of San Francisco. They aren't common in Singapore. I consider that a win for Singapore. I would love for a young Lee Kwan Yew to run San Francisco for a year or ten.
People change their minds when it happens to them. It feels fine to romanticize some abstract ghetto. But when your female friend posts on Facebook how someone tried to rape her in the Mission district when she went out for a night, or when your car is the one with its window smashed in so someone can steal the earbuds you left laying out, then you yearn for a more civilized society.
You say that Singapore is an "upscale version of North Korea", but in what ways? First of all, there is no upscale version of North Korea by definition since communism can never produce a high standard of living. Singapore's economy went from the third world to the first world in a single generation while North Korea has languished in squalor.
In Singapore, we see a country that is very well run. It has a low burden of regulation and taxation with a great social safety net. And it is very safe and open to the world. In what ways is it similar to North Korea again?
- jchan 14y agoI agree with the vast majority of your comment, but please stop saying that North Korea is communist and that "communism can never produce a high standard of living." the former is patently false - North Korea is a Juche (which is not communist) dictatorship that uses communist theory as a carrot to keep its population hopeful. Read the Communist Manifesto if you doubt me. The latter is unknown, as there has never been a true communist country (this isn't a "No True Scotsman fallacy" - a true state of communism is pretty clearly defined in the Manifesto). I don't consider myself a communist (if anything more of a socialist) but reading this sort of FUD about communism is almost as painful as reading about blind hate for socialism in America.
- jacoblyles 14y agoMy price for listening to communist apologists is that they explain how their version of the theory will avoid the millions of deaths that happened in Ukraine, China, and Cambodia, among others. 20th century communism was a true horror. You have your work cut out for you. I consider it an indictment of the modern academy that the gross crimes of communism are constantly deemphasized and excused.
- redthrowaway 14y agoThose crimes weren't committed by communist states, but by totalitarian dictatorships. The true challenge for the communist is to explain how they would create a communist state without having it fall to dictatorship, as every single country it's been tried in has.
- mc32 14y agoI don't know. I mean, in theory those that call themselves communists and act as flagbearers of communism would be communists. Just like those which call themselves capitalists and act like capitalists are capitalists whether or not that deviates from "pure, theoretical {communism|capitalism}". It's a distinction without a difference, in practice. It's like saying, well, priests who molested aren't really priests because priests aren't supposed to do that, according to any doctrine.
- jacoblyles 14y agoI'll gladly own up to the results of impure capitalism (e.g. the United States, Singapore, most of the West, especially the anglosphere) if web/academic communists own up to the results of impure Communism (e.g. the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba)
- asdkl234890 14y agoJust because you don't romanticize Singapore, does not mean you do romanticize San Francisco. I personally only romanticize Switzerland. (This is turning into Libertarian bingo.)