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mothballed 2 days ago

Singapore and Lichtenstein are probably the richest by PPP and they are what I would describe as benevolent monarchies (at least under LKY it was) that have managed to implement classic liberal market policies precisely because they have suppressed some or many components of neoliberalist representative democracy.

LKY basically in a nutshell said 'you get the free market * because I fucking said so and I am smarter than all of you'. Weirdly Singaporeans were smart enough to realize LKY was a one in a million years kind of leader that actually both actually was smarter than everyone else AND was not corrupted to the point he poisoned the whole attempt. If he'd have sought out the populace to vote on his policies they would have done the same thing as most other places in asia and slowly vote more things to themselves in the name of welfare until their position as one of the freest financial markets in Asia was no longer the case.

* Well not for houses, but like half of Singapore is immigrants that can be taxed to pay for the other half's houses so it works out for them.

eru a day ago | parent [-]

Singapore has free and fair elections that international election observers never have found fault with. LKY regularly won elections, and his party still wins elections.

> * Well not for houses, but like half of Singapore is immigrants that can be taxed to pay for the other half's houses so it works out for them.

The proportion of immigrants is lower than what you say, and we are not taxed more than residents. (I'm an immigrant to Singapore.) In fact, they once even gave me a 50% income tax one-off rebate just because in that year they took in more money than they needed. If I were a politician, I would have only given that one-off rebate to citizens, you know the people who can actually vote for you.