Friday, November 4, 2016

Donald Trump May Very Well Be America's Lee Kuan Yew

When I hear Trump talking about suing the media, or changing laws to disadvantage them, I think about Lee Kuan Yew. This was something the late Singaporean prime minister did. Tough for the media, yet Singapore became pretty successful.

Incidentally, this is one of the weird issues with libertarian thought. We want freedom of speech, but the left will take advantage. Technically, even just a media company- massive disruption is profitable to them. But anyway, whether subversive, or motivated via profit, you get this behavior, and the left has no problem shutting down free speech. They have to be stopped somehow in order to maintain whatever it is they are subverting for the rest of us.

Singapore also has a multicultural society. There's a much smaller population, but also fewer resource, which required heavy dependence on foreign trade.

And Lee Kuan Yew did pretty well, from a quality of life and economic standpoint. Some folks get this idea it was basically a one party system, point to various laws and punishments that seem extreme to American eyes, etc... I don't think is really accurate, but even if it was, so what? I can vote for many different candidates, but existence of these choices will not provide me with the increased well-being enjoyed by Singaporeans during Lee Kuan Yew's reign.

We have been encouraged to focus on these particulars, totems really, of 'democracy' or American exceptionalism, rather than the essence.

Anyway, the other guy I've mentioned is Jesse Ventura. Both parties refused to do anything with Ventura, rendering him ineffective. I expect an attempt to do that to Trump, but I also expect D.C. is full of weakness, prone to indictment, and the opposition Trump faces may crumble.

Not only that, Trump is probably more intelligent than Ventura, especially with regard to negotiations.

Things can always get worse, but it is unlikely to be because of Trump specifically, which is why the media coverage, and the cuckservative preening bothers me. He can certainly do no worse than the Bushes, and there's some small chance he can do better. And his incentives are different from politicians- a truth economists ought to be noticing.

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