This post is inspired by the previous one, because there was something I wanted to examine as well.
I do emphatise with the HK protesters, but I also do sometimes wonder if democracy is 'the way' necessarily even. It seems almost common sense to suggest that democracy is the right way, but is that necessarily the truth? After all, democracy is just a man made system filled with flaws.
Looking at some of the Western countries, there clearly are plenty of flaws of democracy. Putting aside the interesting characters that we see in certain countries, democracy can still be flawed in the way it leads to politicians being focused on winning elections. This may lead to resorting to cheap tricks to win voters, over promising things that cannot be delivered, and focuses on short term gains rather than long term goals. Political parties with different visions of how to lead a country trading victories can also lead to uncertain business environments as they go about reversing each other’s policies every 5 years. The fact that in Singapore the ruling party has stayed the same for years is actually a strong point for business confidence.
You can also say plenty of terrible things about China if you want, many of which are legitimate issues, but I think you should also not deny the China that rose from the ashes of the cultural revolution to what it is today, lifting the lives of billions tremendously. Some economists may downplay this, saying their growth was due to increase in inputs, but we know today that they have evolved to be a technological powerhouse as well.
As an aside, perhaps one might argue it was an overly utilitarian approach they took where people have no choice but to tow the line, and many fall through the gaps. Is it alright to sacrifice some for the vast increase of happiness of many? It’s kinda like a real life trolley problem isn’t it. This can probably spin off an entire topic on its own and one I’m not particularly keen on diving into so we’ll just stop here. I think regardless of methods, we’ll just acknowledge at this point that China has vastly improved the lives of its citizens in the past decades.
Anyway, some say an authoritarian leader is needed in such times and then when the world stablises then democracy can take over, but is the world ever stable?
I think regardless of political structure, the quality and character of leadership is the most important. Some might argue that is the reason why democracy is important, since you get to choose your leaders instead of having one forced on you, but well honestly I'm not sure that is necessarily the case these days. People's choices after all aren't always the best choices, and there are a myriad of ways to influence people to vote someone less than ideal into office. People also aren't experts that are able to make the best choices on the best way to move a country forward.
Not that I approve of straight up authoritarian leadership either, but perhaps there is some value in rethinking how we choose our leaders. I’m a business person, and I live in Singapore. I can see the value of a technocratic system something like Singapore’s. Just like how you don’t vote a CEO into office but instead let their performance over time get them into office, perhaps its useful for such a system in politics as well. The technocratic system does lead to having generally competent leaders at the top.
There are certainly downsides too of course, such as how people would have less say in how the country is run (which is really important to many people but tbh I have found less important because I often find too many people want too many different things and a good leader should listen, take in feedback and do what needs to be done). There are terrible CEO’s out there too so directly copying the way businesses do it might not be a good idea either. Key to this would probably be a really robust methodology of ensuring who gets into office is the right person, a way to replace them (some sort of board of directors that holds leaders accountable perhaps), and a way to ensure powers are not abused.
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I have spoken about Singapore almost as if it wasn’t a democracy above. Well, Singapore is what one would call an illiberal democracy or ‘technically a democracy’ (seems like many ‘truths’ about Singapore are just technically true). The state systematically provides a huge advantage to the ruling party to maintain power at the cost of opposition. The quality of opposition in Singapore tends to be lacking yes, and that’s in part because of the structures in place to keep them weak, including things such as the GRC system, first past the post system, People’s Association, influence over much of the media narrative in the state, the general reluctance for many people to be in opposition because of how vilified they are etc. As a result, most of the opposition is made up of a bunch of disenchanted people who just want to make noise and can’t come up with good policies. Then there’s the only serious opposition party in Singapore with serious candidates, the WP, and it forms only a small part of the parliament and also lacks a strong stance. It's existence is literally to serve as a check and balance, there is no other appeal about them. I wouldn’t consider that sort of opposition part of a thriving democracy. As a result, Singapore effectively operates like a one party system.
To their credit the ruling party has stayed the way it is for so long generally because it's been mostly doing a great job. Sure there are many areas of improvement but by and large it's good, and if you look at other countries, you live in other countries, you talk to people from other countries, you see that. I think most people in Singapore acknowledge that and so just choose to let things go along.
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