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Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore Story (2023)

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/lee-kuan-yews-singapore-story
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Lee Kuan Yew is praised by Western academia because of 'benevolent authoritarianism' — in other words, the idea that a small elite should rule over the workers. In fact, his policies were authoritarian and dictatorial.

Despite Singapore's geographical advantages, Lee's achievement in transforming it into a great financial hub is certainly a testament to his capability. However, when you consider his track record 'Operation Clodstore;, the suppression of freedom through defamation laws, and Singapore's early streaming education system — it ultimately seems like he only nurtured people from his own faction, believing that parental background matters.

While criticizing Singapore like this, I suddenly looked up Singapore's statistics. To my surprise, its intergenerational social mobility ranks 20th in the world — higher than I thought. Moreover, I found data showing that South Korea's social mobility is even lower than Singapore's. That made me feel depressed. Of course, with a population of just 5 million, Singapore is easier to manage than larger countries. but stil it functions properly as a nation.

And since Singaporeans reportedly have high life satisfaction, it even makes me question whether authoritarianism is really that bad. But I still dislike authoritarianism based on my personal values.

Still, maybe this is just blind hatred — because I've never been at the center of any industry in my entire life; I've always been an outsider

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> And since Singaporeans reportedly have high life satisfaction

They do not; in fact, they're the least happy country in SE Asia.

https://www.hcamag.com/asia/specialisation/employee-engageme...

The link you cited has nothing to do with "life satisfaction", but rather "job satisfaction", which is a completely different measurement. Singapore has the highest life satisfaction of any Asian country other than Taiwan[1]. Being unhappy with your job obviously does not necessarily translate to being unhappy with your life.

[1]https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction

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