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by Apocryphon 954 days ago
Singapore as an authoritarian city-state is not a model that scales to the entire world. It is an outlier among outliers and not every country has the blessing of being a parasitic entrepôt, even if other aspiring city-states such as Dubai are trying to copy it.
1 comments

Singapore obviously had a lot of differences, particularly the PM's past close relationship with the unions, and the early stage of development making it more rational for workers to ride the common prosperity of high economic growth rates instead of squeezing more percentage points in negotiation.

But Sweden can still outlaw selective parts unloading by dockworkers, forcing an all-or-nothing strike, if it wanted to, and enforce such laws.

And I don't know why you'd call Singapore parasitic; they weren't leeching off anybody, other than the British early on.

I’m riffing off of this comment which described Singapore and Liechtenstein as such:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6786275