Anyway, as I have said before, if you watch CNA a lot, you can't help but be impressed by the apparent technocratic and social reasonableness of the current bunch of governing PAP politicians. I'd be inclined to give up on a more representative form of democracy too if I felt it meant government in the hands of such competent sounding people. Instead, we get stuck with Smarmo (with the occasional fart smell of Mini Trump), who unfortunately is getting better approval ratings than he deserves due to his at least appearing to be on a more-or-less reasonable track regarding COVID-19.
Put me down as someone who is never likely to give him an overall tick of approval - Labor would not have handled COVID-19 substantially differently, and we might at least have something vaguely resembling Ministerial accountability under them.
But - back to Singapore. I was reading this history of their public housing success, and learnt a few things:
While the government’s action helped solve the housing crisis, it was the decision to begin offering subsidized flats for sale in 1964 that laid the foundation for Singapore’s real-estate success. Under its “Home Ownership for the People Scheme” around 2,000 two- and three-bedroom apartments were sold to lower-middle-income citizens in a new estate in the district of Queenstown for as little as S$4,900 each. Like most HDB sales, they were offered on a 99-year lease and buyers were forbidden from reselling the property for at least five years.I find that kind of social engineering very appealing - when it works, anyway.
Once that period finished, owners of flats in prestigious complexes stood to make a sizeable profit. Even in those venerable blocks in Queenstown, an unmodernized two-bedroom unit can now sell for around S$220,000, with only 43 years left on the lease. In 2016, the total resale value of Singapore’s HDB apartments was estimated to be more than S$400 billion.
The blocks were built in neighborhood clusters – miniature new towns with playgrounds, food centers and local shops. The larger ones, like Queenstown, had a health clinic, a community center and a library. And like most things in Singapore’s meticulously planned economy, the management of the estates was integrated into policies that included everything from the design of the city’s mass transit system to racial integration.
In a policy that began in 1989, HDB blocks require minimum levels of occupancy of each of the main ethnic groups in the city — Chinese, Malay and Indian — to prevent the formation of “racial enclaves.” The government continues to implement what one senior minister once called the “most intrusive social policy in Singapore” to encourage social harmony.
The government makes sure the blocks are well maintained:
While many governments have focused public housing programs on the poorest members of society—often allowing the austere concrete blocks to deteriorate into urban slums—Singapore recognized that these homes represented the biggest stake its citizens had in the prosperity of the country. The HDB not only maintained its buildings and grounds carefully, but periodically upgraded estates with new elevators, walkways and facelifts.And how is this for a bit of "that's not how government is supposed to work!" PAP policy:
The potential financial gain from the value of the flats became so important to the nation’s citizens that it was used as a political tool, with the ruling People’s Action Party in the 1980s announcing that it would prioritize maintenance of estates in constituencies that elected a PAP member. The party has never lost a general election.I don't think I had heard this before - but residents now get built in bomb shelters too!:
As the illustrated floor plan above shows, many have a store room, which, in all apartments built since 1996, has become a bomb shelter with reinforced concrete walls and a massive steel door to protect the occupants in case the Republic is attacked.Gee.
Anyway, I can't wait to go back to Disneyland with the Death Penalty, but there is the matter of a certain coronavirus stuffing up my plans.
Such a class act. And look how housing policy is integrated with defence policy. Paul Dibb is a fine intellectual. But our defence white papers are way to unholistic in their thinking. But see how Singapore knows that a city state is going to have to have bomb shelters in as many buildings as possible. Just even to be taken seriously.so they can negotiate meaningfully with foreign counterparts.
ReplyDeleteI see Singapore, at least under Lee, as being Georgist by stealth. But since introducing Georgism is too hard they started buying up the land instead. And putting in all this communist high-rise. So for a very long time, and at least until I stopped watching, they avoided the typical Western and Japanese real estate catastrophes that destroy everyones finances.
To have any kind of functioning society you need to at least meet Henry George part way. Well Lee kind of did that via the unexpected method of communist high-rise. So they are in a great position to go to full Georgism should they ever want to. And there is a bit of a lesson here. Maybe we could aspire to being a Georgist society in a couple of centuries, but ease the transition with many decades of the government buying up land and putting in all these really good, communist high-rise with proven town layouts and designs like what the new urbanists champion. Although with the new urbanists they don't like anything more than 5 stories.
Singapore is a classic despotic state.
ReplyDeleteBeing able to vote in meaningless.
Did you have a bad experience once in Singapore, Homer? Your complaints about the place always seem unusually extreme to me.
ReplyDeleteGrest place to live. Criticize government policy and you are put in prison. If you are in the Opposition a very compliant court will allow any number of spurious libel judgments against you aso you go bankrupt.
ReplyDeleteyou simply cannot change the government.
It is despotic
They will put you in prison, or more likely in comfortable house arrest. But more likely Lee would just bankrupt you if you tried on some bullshit. But they don't crush your skull Homer. They don't kill you if you are not a drug dealer. For a city state who had to face down the communists and keep cool with the Americans thats pretty good going. The Aussies were in Malaya sorting out the commies from about 1948 to 1960. These people were no joke you know. Judged by the Catholic doctrine of "good fruits" that would seem to be our only just war.
ReplyDeleteWe need more egalitarian policies in 2020. But back in the middle twentieth century any country that became dominated by the communists .... No good came of it. Sometimes you just have to win. Like that American coach when asked what the strategy was. He said "Just win baby." Lee's first duty was to win. His second duty was to provide a city that was good for the vast majority of those that lived there. We haven't done that since the 60's. None of the English-Speaking countries have. Lee didn't have a whole lot to work with. Lee had a whole lot less to work with than we did.