From: depeche@cs.mcgill.ca (Acme Instant Dehydrated Boulder Kit)
Subject: Re: Canada and Quebec (was: REFERENDUM '92)
Organization: Save the Missippi Riverboat Paddlewheel Fund
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 02:10:07 GMT

[wow ! I just noticed that this message is being cross-posted to a hellova
lot of newsgroups, many of them distributed all over canada. If you are
outside montreal and are posting public followups to my messages, please
cc: them to my e-mail address, as I only read mtl.general and
locally-distributed mcgill newsgroups, so I won't see them otherwise]. 

In article <1992Nov6.221819.24646@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> thomas@McRCIM.McGill.EDU (Thomas Jelonek) writes:
>
>In article <1992Nov6.152738.13901@cs.mcgill.ca>, depeche@cs.mcgill.ca (Acme Instant Dehydrated Boulder Kit) writes:
>|> In article <1992Nov4.230737.29054@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> thomas@McRCIM.McGill.EDU (Thomas Jelonek) writes:

>|> >I am unware of any historical precedent of a `benevolent dictator'. Thus I
[he goes bla bla...]

>|> Well, in Singapore, they got a list of human rights violations a mile long,
[and I go bla bla...]

[and then he asks:]
>Is everything really so rosy in Singapore? I know there have been some
>social costs related to Singapore's cosy realtionship with
>multinational corporations. 	

First of all, I am not an expert on singapore - I read as much as I could
before my 3-day visit there, but I was reading a lot about lots of places
at the time... Here are my impressions anyway...

Singapore strikes me as perhaps the cleanest modern city in the world, with
the possible exception of Canberra (the capitol of Australia, which is so
clean it's disgusting). The problem is, when you have a government which
has no tolerance of dissent, you end up with a very conformist society. The
only singaporians I met were products of this conformist society, and
NATURALLY, they're happy with the way things are [or if they're not, they
won't admit it, even when they're travelling]. A single woman can walk in
the middle of downtown at 3am and feel TOTALLY safe. You won't see a single
cigarette butt anywhere except in the ashtrays mounted on the trash
barrels, spaced evenly on every major street. The subway stations look like
airports, with beautiful flora and decor. In other words, it's nice.

Fundamentally, I don't like the thought of living without basic
civil rights - I have no confidence in politicians or dictators, and if I
was living in Singapore during the change, I probably would have been
"quelled" by the police long ago. Now that what's been done is already
done, I am very impressed with the results though.

There is a little article in the Economist [october 24, 1992, page 37] which
outlines one of the down-sides to the current situation in Singapore. I'll
quote bits of it here. All typos are exclusive property of AIDBK and cannot
be distributed without my permission.

-cut here-
On a recent visit to China, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father and
senior minister, disclosed that he was worried that Singaporeans might lack
the entrepreneurial skill and zeal to take advantage of the economic
opportunities opening up in East Asia. Singapore, he said, now needed
adventurous, risk-taking entrepreneurs willing to take part in the economic
boom in the region. But, he sighed, life was too comfortable that
Singaporeans "are reluctant to go into environments which are the exact
opposite of Singapore's." 

Creating an entrepreneurial spirit in Singapore is not going to be easy.
The government's success in building a hard-working, educated and obedient
citizenry militates against the risk-taking, rebellious spirit that is
usually assumed to be at the heart of an entrepreneurial culture.

...But if they are serious about creating more entrepreneurs, Singapore's
politicians may have to dilute all those years of social indoctrination and
encourage character traits hitherto regarded as suspect: unorthodoxy, a
willingness to risk failure, and - heresy - a certain irreverence about
government.

-cut here too-

And we were worried about FAMILY VALUES being preached by the next US prez!
Singapore's preaching entrepreneurial values instead!

>|> But alas, nobody in the US would accept such a form of government.

>I don't chew gum, but I still would not accept this form of government. In 
>such a society I suspect that individual expression and creativity would be 
>limited. I imagine it is like living in IBM.

[living _in_ IBM? what a scary thought!!! :-} ]

Actually, I should have put a smiley at the end of my statement. I don't
have any desire to witness such a transformation on the US [I'm not
mentioning canada, 'cause the fundamental problems a dictatorship would fix
don't really exist in canada, from what I can see. The problems which
DO exist in canada would make it impossible for ANY leader, but especially
a dictator, to get enough support from the people to instill ANY changes,
good or bad!], is because anybody who tries to grab that much power while
leading a country as powerful as the US is doing it for the power alone,
and not for the desire to help the people of the country. 

-- 
| Alan Ezust    depeche@cs.mcgill.ca   McGill University Computer Science    |
|------------------------Montreal, Quebec, Canada (?)------------------------|
|  I'm not much of a night person. I'm *definitely* not a morning person.    |
|  I'm not really an afternoon person either. Does this mean I'm a nobody?   |
Newsgroups: soc.culture.canada