The debate about communism and democracy is now merely academic and we should leave all the arguements behind in the 80s and 90s. Nowadays nobody gives a shit...whether u in Russia, China, Vietnam...etc. But if u in a dictatorship and oppressing people like Syria or Iran....then u will be treated like a pariah and u should be.
No, not really. This is a very current debate and it's coming up because a lot of people all over the world are getting disillusioned over the way that the free market works. There is not a lot of consciousness about how the free market is underlying all of Singapore's problems, and people have the old notion that the government still controls everything. It's fairly typical that when we start talking about new ideas, they get dismissed as being "academic". "Academic" here usually means it's something you don't really understand.
When I said that other people are having these debates, I meant, like, right now.
Before Kingrant introduced the word "communism" into this discussion, what we were debating about was: what is the role of the government in regulating or controlling private enterprises. My standpoint in the debate is that the senior executives of corporations in Singapore / the rest of the world (including the foreign talents that Singaporeans love so much) are the new tyrants. The government is just the puppet who allow them to screw the common man.
Suppose you were a warlord in Syria (Assad is no longer is a dictator, so let's call him a warlord) and you were to go around killing a lot of people, that is a form of tyranny.
Suppose you were a banker, and you and your fellow elites engineered a system where all members of the younger generation had to live in places that cost a million dollars, and they had to take loans and work like shit to service the loans for the rest of their lives. (ie this is the life of young people in Singapore today). That is also a form of tyranny.
Unfortunately we aren't at the point where the bankers and real estate agents all get treated like pariahs. But probably the day will come soon. And it's really not alright to sit back and say, "relax bro, that is the system, what to do?"
They can reform the system and make it easier on the common people, or maybe they'll all lose their heads in the next revolution? Who knows?
Usually there are two sorts of people who want to overthrow the PAP. First type is the person who doesn't like the way the system produces a great amount of inequality, and they're horrified at how the middle class is losing ground to the elites. Second type is the person who's impatient to profit from such a system, and they want to keep on screwing people more and more, and they're tired that the government is standing in their way. Usually I look at the people on this forum and I try to work out which category they belong to.