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

I grew up in the former capital of a country that was colonized by the British and one thing that stood out to me while I was studying the history of my city was how much the colonial structure survived in terms of vested interest and avenues of power exercised, including corruption. I learned how the most of the agents of the crown that came to my town were largely Scottish and Irish in ethnicity, taking a post here just to earn enough money to go back and live a lavish lifestyle, hence heavily indulged in corruption, and that working culture still survives. The reason why it wasn't reformed was not only governance apathy but also the same vested interests greasing the hands that held power at any given time to protect their cash cow. And if that doesn't work using inflammatory accusation to rile up a popular protest by scaring the populace using their insecurities.

I am not a fan of "authoritarianism" but I do recognize that Singapore had a lot of the same issues and Lee Kuan Yew effectively used authoritarianism to drive it out. But one thing to keep in mind is that Singapore got very lucky in getting Lee Kuan Yew as their leader, someone who was very idealistic in his goals and had the pragmatism to execute it. Such a person is very rare and even rarer is for someone like that to rise to a position of power.

Lee Kuan Yew is heavily praised in Korea especially and the rest of Asia so I do not know how you came to generating your reply that he is a Western academic orientalist object comes from, that is certainly far from reality.

> 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...

Please modify your AI writing prompt to avoid semicolons, and the EM dash.

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