I am 45, almost no place that I grew up and hang out in Singapore when I was a child to my adulthood exist anymore. Dad's farm in Tenggah taken by Land Acquisition Act in 1980s. Jurong entertainment became JCube and now another development. National Library is gone. Princess Elizabeth Walk is no more. Science centre to close. My primary school closed and the land became 40-storey HDB blocks. Grandpa's HDB in Boon Lay torn down. King Albert Park McDonald's is gone. Marina South is gone. Where I studied, Bukit Timah SMU switched to NUS Law.
This is very interesting as a Singapore resident for 8+ years — the capitalism and consumerism of this tiny island nation never seems to cease! There are many many attributes I loved about Singapore but in many ways it’s also not real life. I can see why Singapore is losing manufacturing to Malaysia — it makes sense with all that space there and the ringgit. That’s for sharing and great to connect!
to add, I think the capitalism that many individuals yearn for isn't necessarily by conscious choice but by years of conditioning from the forces that be, being sold the idea that you gotta play the rules of the game to get ahead. as these rules start to erode (as LW said, the old rules are gone but the new rules haven't been put in place yet), there is ever more reason for us to change the playbook, but years of systemic disempowerment have left most common people in a state of learned helplessness
If you can come up with a plan as to how Singapore can seal itself off from Western capitalist consumption (of which this very platform is one example), and how many Singaporean workers now actually want to work in manufacturing at prices competitive to Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, I'm all ears. My friends who run SMEs complain that Singapore workers turn up for one day, decide that the work is too hard and never show up for work the next day without even having the courtesy to quit. Realistically, quite possibly the worst/best thing to have happened to Singapore was the computer and the internet. Because that meant that businesses could literally go anywhere and hire from anywhere, and that all competition became global. We're neither as good enough as the best of the developed cities nor as cheap enough as the cheapest of the manufacturing industries. I guess we could become Cuba, even though we are a fraction of the size. But I doubt our very mobile and elitist PMC would stay even one extra day in Singapore then. We have the Singapore the majority of Singaporeans are willing to fight for, which I guess is democracy in action.
If your takeaway from reading this story is that the binary options for Singapore are being communist Cuba or hyper-capitalist Singapore, I’m not really sure what to say to you other than that the education system should apologise for failing to educate you on logic, history, and current affairs.
I hope you're not going to point to the Nordic countries each of which had a historical and social-cultural trajectory based on (a) substantially homogenous white Calvanist culture not pluralist racial-religious mix (b) have land masses far larger than Singapore which fits in between KL city and the KLIA with room left over (c) had a export market into nearby upper middle class European countries that could fuel industrial and manufacturing expansion and support a social welfare system (d) did not have to spend big sums on defence by relying on American defence paid for by America thereby allowing them to divert resources that would otherwise go to an armed forces elsewhere and (e) if you look beyond the liberal progressive cherry picking of facts, you'll find that their model is coming under pressure from the very same capitalist, financialist forces pressing on Singapore with their young also facing being priced out of housing and rising cost of living. And if you think that Singapore with housing subsidies to buy a flat, a small pension endowment funded out of CPF and cobstant government intervention in the market via it's GLCs is hyper-capitalist, I suggest you have a look at Hong Kong and American economies and do a compare and contrast.
Your article makes two points (a) Singapore is hyper capitalist and people feel more financially insecure now with a greater sense of precarity (b) there is a great sense of loss and nostalgia when things change and disappear. You then draw a causal relationship between (a) and (b) which cannot actually be proven.
(a) is not entirely correct because Singapore is not purely hyper capitalist. Although I don't disagree about the precarity, your period of non-precariousness is a very small sliver of time in a very unique period not just in Singapore but worldwide. Precarity is a worldwide issue and not just in capitalist Singapore.
Moreover drawing a causal relationship between (a) and (b) ignores the fact that (b) also occurred a lot during the times when Singapore was in that state of less precarity of people having jobs for life (a thing I actually remember: people complaining incessantly about how things kept changing and how much we were losing in the 1970s). Finally, correlation is not causation.
The issue of nostalgia against change happens all the time, everywhere. Von Haussman’s remodelling of Paris, the building of the Eiffel Tower, all ignited much nostalgia and derision among a certain artistic French class. Victor Hugo famously mourns the loss of the slums which he said were full of character and in the same way there were Singaporeans who mourned kampongs and pig farms when we had them. It is certainly not true that people in the 1970s and 80s were not also complaining about change and loss. The sole difference is that there was no internet for them to air their views.
Finally, your article posists a materialistic Singaporean that mourns change but is not willing to give up the material benefits brought by things like REITs and tuition centres and mourns the homogenisation and loss of “quirky” stores and eating places. I entirely agree with this point but that observation is neither here nor there. When cataloguing books became a thing people mourned the freedom of browsing books placed higgeldy piggeldy next to each other. Homogenisation is happening everywhere and is not unique to Singapore (and I acknowledge you didn't say it was) but to talk about homogenisation of retail and not talk about how internet global retail has exploded the retail model and that “quirky” things are bought by Singaporeans from all over the world now and not just Singapore shops and hence Singapore shops selling quirky things are as much victims of the internet and not just REITs malls. Since I know someone who actually ran a shop selling quirky things, I know that his competition was not the large malls but online sellers.
Finally, I would actually push back against your view that there are less quirky shops now. As someone who lived through the 1970s and 80s, there are a lot more quirky shops selling quirky things now than before and the range of goods actually available in Singapore from both malls and quirky shops is, in my experience, exponentially greater than when I was young when the things available for sale were much much more limited. And the simple reason for that Singaporeans have more money, have travelled more and want to have things they saw on their trips.
I will very much prefer Singapore be a 25th most expensive city in the world, instead of the most expensive. I'd very much we are a country not rich but striving and united, instead of one of the richest it is now but divided. Id rather if we dont have talent, then the government have the courage to stick with us and lead us towards that instead of treating us as disposable. The trajectory is hurting the country. What is the point of amassing more wealth when it is breaking the country and people apart?
Re: Tiger beer, younger generations are drinking beer less, and of course there’s the significant Muslim population, which doesn’t drink alcohol. Interestingly, the best carbonated water I’ve had in Asia was from a Thai beer bottling company. Sounds like more pivots are needed, not fewer?
No the business model was definitely not working, but this piece wasn't intended to be a call for them to preserve it, and was more explaining why people look at it through such a nostalgic lens. When I was interviewing polytechnic (vocational education) grads who came up in the era where Singapore was rapidly changing, so many speak of how their jobs afforded them the social mobility to send their kids to university - which is a far cry from the more pessimistic vibe that exists now.
I am 45, almost no place that I grew up and hang out in Singapore when I was a child to my adulthood exist anymore. Dad's farm in Tenggah taken by Land Acquisition Act in 1980s. Jurong entertainment became JCube and now another development. National Library is gone. Princess Elizabeth Walk is no more. Science centre to close. My primary school closed and the land became 40-storey HDB blocks. Grandpa's HDB in Boon Lay torn down. King Albert Park McDonald's is gone. Marina South is gone. Where I studied, Bukit Timah SMU switched to NUS Law.
Found your stack by accident and couldn't agree more.
This is very interesting as a Singapore resident for 8+ years — the capitalism and consumerism of this tiny island nation never seems to cease! There are many many attributes I loved about Singapore but in many ways it’s also not real life. I can see why Singapore is losing manufacturing to Malaysia — it makes sense with all that space there and the ringgit. That’s for sharing and great to connect!
everyday is an opportunity to be better.
or worse…
Money as a social enforced delusion means national obsession with it render its people the opposite of realistic and practical.
Yeah, things change fast. And we are forever constructing. But it also shows we are constantly reinventing ourselves.
to add, I think the capitalism that many individuals yearn for isn't necessarily by conscious choice but by years of conditioning from the forces that be, being sold the idea that you gotta play the rules of the game to get ahead. as these rules start to erode (as LW said, the old rules are gone but the new rules haven't been put in place yet), there is ever more reason for us to change the playbook, but years of systemic disempowerment have left most common people in a state of learned helplessness
If you can come up with a plan as to how Singapore can seal itself off from Western capitalist consumption (of which this very platform is one example), and how many Singaporean workers now actually want to work in manufacturing at prices competitive to Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, I'm all ears. My friends who run SMEs complain that Singapore workers turn up for one day, decide that the work is too hard and never show up for work the next day without even having the courtesy to quit. Realistically, quite possibly the worst/best thing to have happened to Singapore was the computer and the internet. Because that meant that businesses could literally go anywhere and hire from anywhere, and that all competition became global. We're neither as good enough as the best of the developed cities nor as cheap enough as the cheapest of the manufacturing industries. I guess we could become Cuba, even though we are a fraction of the size. But I doubt our very mobile and elitist PMC would stay even one extra day in Singapore then. We have the Singapore the majority of Singaporeans are willing to fight for, which I guess is democracy in action.
If your takeaway from reading this story is that the binary options for Singapore are being communist Cuba or hyper-capitalist Singapore, I’m not really sure what to say to you other than that the education system should apologise for failing to educate you on logic, history, and current affairs.
I hope you're not going to point to the Nordic countries each of which had a historical and social-cultural trajectory based on (a) substantially homogenous white Calvanist culture not pluralist racial-religious mix (b) have land masses far larger than Singapore which fits in between KL city and the KLIA with room left over (c) had a export market into nearby upper middle class European countries that could fuel industrial and manufacturing expansion and support a social welfare system (d) did not have to spend big sums on defence by relying on American defence paid for by America thereby allowing them to divert resources that would otherwise go to an armed forces elsewhere and (e) if you look beyond the liberal progressive cherry picking of facts, you'll find that their model is coming under pressure from the very same capitalist, financialist forces pressing on Singapore with their young also facing being priced out of housing and rising cost of living. And if you think that Singapore with housing subsidies to buy a flat, a small pension endowment funded out of CPF and cobstant government intervention in the market via it's GLCs is hyper-capitalist, I suggest you have a look at Hong Kong and American economies and do a compare and contrast.
Stop strawman-ing me and projecting the points you want me to make onto the points that I actually did make in my article.
Your article makes two points (a) Singapore is hyper capitalist and people feel more financially insecure now with a greater sense of precarity (b) there is a great sense of loss and nostalgia when things change and disappear. You then draw a causal relationship between (a) and (b) which cannot actually be proven.
(a) is not entirely correct because Singapore is not purely hyper capitalist. Although I don't disagree about the precarity, your period of non-precariousness is a very small sliver of time in a very unique period not just in Singapore but worldwide. Precarity is a worldwide issue and not just in capitalist Singapore.
Moreover drawing a causal relationship between (a) and (b) ignores the fact that (b) also occurred a lot during the times when Singapore was in that state of less precarity of people having jobs for life (a thing I actually remember: people complaining incessantly about how things kept changing and how much we were losing in the 1970s). Finally, correlation is not causation.
The issue of nostalgia against change happens all the time, everywhere. Von Haussman’s remodelling of Paris, the building of the Eiffel Tower, all ignited much nostalgia and derision among a certain artistic French class. Victor Hugo famously mourns the loss of the slums which he said were full of character and in the same way there were Singaporeans who mourned kampongs and pig farms when we had them. It is certainly not true that people in the 1970s and 80s were not also complaining about change and loss. The sole difference is that there was no internet for them to air their views.
Finally, your article posists a materialistic Singaporean that mourns change but is not willing to give up the material benefits brought by things like REITs and tuition centres and mourns the homogenisation and loss of “quirky” stores and eating places. I entirely agree with this point but that observation is neither here nor there. When cataloguing books became a thing people mourned the freedom of browsing books placed higgeldy piggeldy next to each other. Homogenisation is happening everywhere and is not unique to Singapore (and I acknowledge you didn't say it was) but to talk about homogenisation of retail and not talk about how internet global retail has exploded the retail model and that “quirky” things are bought by Singaporeans from all over the world now and not just Singapore shops and hence Singapore shops selling quirky things are as much victims of the internet and not just REITs malls. Since I know someone who actually ran a shop selling quirky things, I know that his competition was not the large malls but online sellers.
Finally, I would actually push back against your view that there are less quirky shops now. As someone who lived through the 1970s and 80s, there are a lot more quirky shops selling quirky things now than before and the range of goods actually available in Singapore from both malls and quirky shops is, in my experience, exponentially greater than when I was young when the things available for sale were much much more limited. And the simple reason for that Singaporeans have more money, have travelled more and want to have things they saw on their trips.
https://substack.com/@leomagazine/note/p-198997995?r=7iqddt
I will very much prefer Singapore be a 25th most expensive city in the world, instead of the most expensive. I'd very much we are a country not rich but striving and united, instead of one of the richest it is now but divided. Id rather if we dont have talent, then the government have the courage to stick with us and lead us towards that instead of treating us as disposable. The trajectory is hurting the country. What is the point of amassing more wealth when it is breaking the country and people apart?
Reminds me of the phrase, Frogs boiled alive slowly, squeezed of their juice. Do frogs taste good?
Re: Tiger beer, younger generations are drinking beer less, and of course there’s the significant Muslim population, which doesn’t drink alcohol. Interestingly, the best carbonated water I’ve had in Asia was from a Thai beer bottling company. Sounds like more pivots are needed, not fewer?
No the business model was definitely not working, but this piece wasn't intended to be a call for them to preserve it, and was more explaining why people look at it through such a nostalgic lens. When I was interviewing polytechnic (vocational education) grads who came up in the era where Singapore was rapidly changing, so many speak of how their jobs afforded them the social mobility to send their kids to university - which is a far cry from the more pessimistic vibe that exists now.