Is Singapore a test case for Georgism? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14895544
How Capitalist Is Singapore Really?

It's fascinating to hear certain right wing commentators hold up Singapore as a model of capitalism. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom ranks Singapore as the second most “economically free” country in the world (Hong Kong is #1).

It is true of course that Singapore has a market economy. But it’s also true that in Singapore the state owns a huge amount of the means of production. In fact, depending on how you count it, the Singaporean government probably owns more capital than any other developed country in the world after Norway.

The Singaporean state owns 90 percent of the country’s land. Remarkably, this level of ownership was not present from the beginning. In 1949, the state owned just 31 percent of the country’s land. It got up to 90 percent land ownership through decades of forced sales, or what people in the US call eminent domain.

The Singaporean state does not merely own the land. They directly develop it, especially for residential purposes. Over 80 percent of Singapore’s population lives in housing constructed by the country’s public housing agency HDB. The Singaporean government claims that around 90 percent of people living in HDB units “own” their home. But the way it really works is that, when a new HDB unit is built, the government sells a transferable 99-year lease for it. The value of that lease slowly declines as it approaches the 99-year mark, after which point the lease expires and possession of the HDB unit reverts back to the state. Thus, Singapore is a land where almost everyone is a long-term public housing tenant.


And the state takes an interest in private enterprises as well, through the state-controlled sovereign wealth fund Temasek. Singapore's GLC's (Government-Linked Corporations) are the equivalent of China's state owned enterprises. Singapore Incorporated, as it's sometimes called, is a mixture of command and distributed (market) economics.

Much of the success of Singapore and China can be attribute to its successful resistance to the privatization wave that swept western economies. Perhaps reversal is a better word than resistance, considering its 90% land-ownership.

Which brings us to the question of Georgism. Singapore has effectively quashed land rents by holding the ownership of land in common, and managing its use for the public good. I've been more than skeptical of Georgism in the past, but the Singaporeans seem to have effectively utilized it (though I'm not sure if they would acknowledge Georgism as an influence).

Breunig poses a thought experiment for Westerners:

Imagine a national experiment in which we...
...expropriate nearly all of the land in the country, build virtually all of the housing in the country, move almost everyone into public housing leaseholds, become the largest shareholder of more than a third of the country’s publicly-traded companies (weighted by market capitalization), and build out a sovereign wealth fund that holds tens of trillions of dollars of corporate assets.


This reinforces my belief that capitalism is not actually an -ism; i.e., it's a descriptive rather prescriptive term. What we see is long-term evolution pruning away unsuccessful economic experiments. The next experiment to bite the dust will be (IMHO) US-style corporatism. It's fatal flaw is that the state in the West has become powerless to direct and organize the economy - indeed the very action of doing so is considered ideologically illegitimate.
#14895550
This reinforces my belief that capitalism is not actually an -ism; i.e., it's a descriptive rather prescriptive term. What we see is long-term evolution pruning away unsuccessful economic experiments. The next experiment to bite the dust will be (IMHO) US-style corporatism. It's fatal flaw is that the state in the West has become powerless to direct and organize the economy - indeed the very action of doing so is considered ideologically illegitimate.



I agree. The idea of corporations dominating the state has been driving the last 50 years of rising inequality in the West, particularly America. Adam Smith did write in his Welth of Natiobs that the state should be above the financiers and merchants or else they would distort policy and resource allocation to the detriment of the ecomonybas a whole.

I am interested in the opinions of people with formal expertise in economics.
#14895865
One thing about Singapore (and Hong Kong), is that they aren't really countries; they are cities. I think the free marketeers that point to these places as models of capitalist 'countries' are full of it, because of this.

But this thread presents a separate angle to the critique.

It is quite interesting, but relates to additional insights with respect to their city-state model.

Perhaps Singapore is an example of the success of local sovereignty in economic governance; and their model for housing provision is an example of an advanced methodology for housing and land distribution in a major urban center.
#14895874
@quetzalcoatl, I haven't got a clue about Georgism, and I don't think that I want to know about it, just like I don't want to know about millions of other theories.

What is interesting in this is that you use an artificial construct from your own socioeconomic sphere and extend its validity to the entire plant, or universe. You are looking for validation of your views in an environment that has absolutely nothing to do with your own. To extend your value system to the whole of the known universe is symptomatic of the mindset of imperialism.

Singapore is a de facto one-party autocracy. The ruling PAP party has been in power since 1959. In the last election it gained 83 out of 89 districts. Is it that popular? No! But it can allocate public funds. It can punish districts that don't vote PAP by cutting public funding and services, while rewarding districts that voted PAP.

Singapore is also finance and trading hub for the whole region. Expats prefer to live there than in less developed countries in the region. International companies set up their regional HQ in Singapore to serve the whole of South East Asia. A “hub” is the “centre” of a region, if every city were to follow that example and become a “hub” or a regional centre, there would be no more hubs and Singapore would just become another shit hole.

Singapore like Switzerland is also an international tax haven. Can every country be a tax haven? No! The same applies as above. Like Crantag said, it is a small city state that lives on financial and other services on the back of the whole region. It has no significant merits of its own. It has no significant innovation or even manufacturing. It's a pariah. But it can't even serve as model for wannabe pariahs with a different culture.

Culturally Singapore is formed by Confucianism and other Chinese cultural values. Would that serve to other countries with a different cultural background? Could Spain or Honduras develop like South Korea or Singapore? Most certainly not! If they could, they would have done so long time ago.

Thus, applying your value system to another socioeconomic environment is useless and using Singapore as model for other countries is even more useless.
#14895922
Atlantis wrote:@quetzalcoatl, I haven't got a clue about Georgism, and I don't think that I want to know about it, just like I don't want to know about millions of other theories.

What is interesting in this is that you use an artificial construct from your own socioeconomic sphere and extend its validity to the entire plant, or universe. You are looking for validation of your views in an environment that has absolutely nothing to do with your own. To extend your value system to the whole of the known universe is symptomatic of the mindset of imperialism.

Singapore is a de facto one-party autocracy. The ruling PAP party has been in power since 1959. In the last election it gained 83 out of 89 districts. Is it that popular? No! But it can allocate public funds. It can punish districts that don't vote PAP by cutting public funding and services, while rewarding districts that voted PAP.

Singapore is also finance and trading hub for the whole region. Expats prefer to live there than in less developed countries in the region. International companies set up their regional HQ in Singapore to serve the whole of South East Asia. A “hub” is the “centre” of a region, if every city were to follow that example and become a “hub” or a regional centre, there would be no more hubs and Singapore would just become another shit hole.

Singapore like Switzerland is also an international tax haven. Can every country be a tax haven? No! The same applies as above. Like Crantag said, it is a small city state that lives on financial and other services on the back of the whole region. It has no significant merits of its own. It has no significant innovation or even manufacturing. It's a pariah. But it can't even serve as model for wannabe pariahs with a different culture.

Culturally Singapore is formed by Confucianism and other Chinese cultural values. Would that serve to other countries with a different cultural background? Could Spain or Honduras develop like South Korea or Singapore? Most certainly not! If they could, they would have done so long time ago.

Thus, applying your value system to another socioeconomic environment is useless and using Singapore as model for other countries is even more useless.

I don't know that Singapore is a pariah exactly but you make some very good points here.

I suspect you are right that Singapore government's land policy has more to do with ensuring loyalty to the regime than enriching the citizenry. And that Singapore's wealth comes from being a tax haven and a trade hub.

---

If you did want a primer on geoism I think my cheapshot take would be this:

Capitalism = some people saving up to buy land & buildings so that they don't have to pay rent because they think they will save some money that way

Geoism = some people saying that it isn't fair that some people don't have to pay rent and so creating a convoluted ideological-economic paradigm which claims that everyone should be forced to pay rent or injustice will prevail
#14895926
quetzalcoatl wrote:It's fascinating to hear certain right wing commentators hold up Singapore as a model of capitalism. The conservative Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom ranks Singapore as the second most “economically free” country in the world (Hong Kong is #1).


I think it is fair to say that the Heritage Foundation's definition of "Economically free" is a big steaming pile of garbage. I don't understand, from an admittedly libertarian strain of though, how you can call a place "economically free" when it basically prohibits land-privatization. Public-ownership is the inverse of economic freedom.

Now, if they only mean a lack of taxes and regulations for their own personal ventures, that is a different matter altogether and I suspect that is what they meant.

Whether or not Singapore's relative prosperity has anything to do with their political practices is any one's guess. Obviously, being a tax haven that is good to businesses and being located in the Asian-Pacific Crossroads of the world with an ancient reputation among world-merchants helps A LOT.

Indeed, I would say that Singapore's success is for them to lose, as they would have to do very little to become profitable given their circumstances in comparison to other nations. I would therefore say that they are likely prosperous IN SPITE of their Georgism and not because of it.
#14896087
This thread wasn't intended to suggest Singapore as a model for the entire world.

Nevertheless, certain policies are seen to consistently fail over time, and across different cultures - even after allowing for differences in cultures.

Here are some of the big fails:

1) Privatization of the public sphere
2) Austerity as a solution to economic decline
3) Free markets as and end in themselves
4) Conflating unregulated markets with free markets
5) Using odious debt as a weapon against poorer nations

Atlantis wrote:...applying your value system to another socioeconomic environment is useless...


I hear this incessantly from the right. For instance, they will say the US can't adopt the northern European model of socialism because we are too big, too diverse, too multilingual, yada yada. Also, just for the record, I have no universal system of proper government in mind. Sure, I'd like to see the US move distinctly to the left and ditch foreign interventionism - other than that, I'm fairly catholic in my political views.
#14899888
Political Interest wrote:Isn't the leasing system in Singapore put in place because of the scarcity of land


That is probably their justification, but I don't see why it makes sense. If land was limited, that just means prices would go sky-high for demand would be far higher than the market availability to meet that demand and this would generate greater tax revenue when properties did sell.

I will admit though, that historically-speaking, it was non-democratic feudal lords which ruled such little states as a proprietorship in the past. In such cases, these proprietorships were, technically speaking, privately owned (but still only one owner). but this still seems better than public-ownership as Singapore has done, in my opinion.

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