Here is a recent example of an ongoing debate among liberals and conservatives over the meaning of populism, Victor Orban, Lee Kuan Yew, and government form:Bronze Age Pervert Magenta Notebooks is a reader-supported publication.
Well said. The anti-meritocracy has been a quiet rot at the heart of American culture.
I'll just harp on one item - college admissions - and actually a sub-item, the SAT test.
The pre-1995 SAT was mathematically much less forgiving, and a perfect score was an incredibly rare statistical anomaly (circa 10 perfect 1600s a year nationally as of 1987). Today, a perfect score is achieved by around 7000 students a year rather than a handful. (Yes there are more test takers now, but now 0.4% of students get a perfect 1600, vs <0.001% in 1987)
In 1995, the scores were "reweighted" and the precision of top scores was effectively destroyed. What was once a razor-sharp instrument designed to identify extraordinary mathematical and verbal reasoning became a blunt tool, artificially compressing the right tail of the bell curve.
This is not really about the perfect scorers, but the loss of granularity. Before 1995, a score of 750 on the math section signaled a fundamentally different tier of cognitive abstraction than a 700. The test has stopped doing its primary job: differentiating talent at the absolute highest level.
We replaced a meritocratic ladder with a gated community. Of course the 'left' wanted this change so they could focus even more on 'holistic' admissions - eg group preferences - but in general all society went along with the situation - there is also a measure of corruption in that those parents with sufficient 'social capital' were happy with this change as well. I'm not even making an argument against a bit of an 'aristocratic' tinge at the top universities in regards to admissions - but we already have legacy and athletic admissions for that. We need the granularity of admissions testing back.
There's also massive cheating and gaming of the new SAT. It shouldn't be possible to prepare for these exams to the extent it's possible today anyway. Also admissions should in my opinion be based exclusively on battery of exams.
"In fact, 19th-century liberalism is in many cases synonymous with nationalist projects, such as the unification of Germany and Italy." - True as that may be, certain ideas and myths harbor a latent seed of destruction that only bears fruit when conditions become favorable. Consider how Christianity, though once invigorated by a pagan ethos that enabled Europe to flourish, nonetheless carried the nascent seeds of the decay we observe today. Probably, liberalism also carries such a seed.
Regarding "manual workers": Europe also needs people who are less inclined toward intellectual work. Perhaps with AI this will eventually become largely redundant, but it was certainly still important under Orbán. There are two solutions to this: either a society "produces" these people itself, or it has to import them, because, like it or not, it’s not possible to live solely on engineers, philosophers and artists.
I agree with the assessment that conservative American influences have somewhat shaped Orbán’s latest strategy and positions, which has been largely harmful to european right-wing movements. This even had some farcical moments like the most recent CPAC event in Hungary in March of this year, which opened with the American national anthem, to the astonishment of many of the European nationalists in attendance.
Re: the "nascent seed": This is an argument I used to be very taken by esp. in my orthodox NRX days but have become less influenced by as I came to realize just how Hegelian it all is. Christianity is inherently egalitarian by virtue of its theology. Liberalism is not, and very little in the work of early liberals expressed any of the tendencies we see in modern leftism. There's a kind of consequentialism here hinging on Hegelian metaphysics that fails to recognize that everything is, in reality, in flux, and a shift at one point in the geneaology of an idea could totally transform that idea. Hitler transformed liberalism by pushing it away from explicit population control (eugenics) and a liberalism closer ideologically to Bonapartism or Fascism can certainly be imagined had things turned out slightly differently.
Yeah agreed. To believe otherwise is to disparage the bedrock of the anglo decentralist tendencies (the Germanic thread?) and yarvin himself wud prolly agree too despite keeping the dumb interpretation available for politically expedient purposes
I'd add to this that Orban pivoted Hungary heavily towards foreign tourism, which probably factored into his policy of suppressing the forint's value. I lived in Budapest from 2017-2018 and while I enjoyed it, I was also coming from the perspective of an American living off an American wage. For young Hungarians, Orbanistan was a miserable place with no opportunity. They had already turned on Orban by 2018; Jobbik was the most popular party among youth at that point.
I last visited Budapest in 2022 and was disgusted with what had become of it. The increasing foreigner presence drove me out of Hungary in the first place; hearing drunk British stag partiers yelling outside of my apartment at 10pm on a weeknight was not my idea of fun. But in 2022, pretty much everything fun about the city was gone. Orban bought into the COVID scam like every other boomer leader and small business was crushed. All the places I used to hang out at were gone. And everywhere downtown, I heard nothing but English. Deak Ferenc ter was a sea of American and Canadians yammering away. Many were tourists, sure, but I can't imagine a young Hungarian felt much better about his city being colonized by white Canadian women snapping selfies on a group tour then I do about Times Square or Penn Station being a Babel-esque nightmare of foreigners.
Orban held onto power in part because he could at least convincingly portray himself as being a solid defender of the country's interests on the foreign stage. He swept to power after the Socialist government crashed the economy and indebted Hungary to the IMF; he held on through the migrant invasion of a decade ago and got a last wind in 2022 by playing on Hungarian concerns about the Ukraine war. But his bag of tricks ran out. The fact that it was an ex-Fidesz politician who dethroned him makes sense, as Magyar knew how to play to Hungarian sensibilities in a way that the clown-car leftist opposition and Jobbik/Mi Hazank dullards could not.
LKY is the product of a historical era in which the polarized geopolitical forces (USA and USSR) helped catalyze radical right-wing experimentalisms in politics: trad fascism (Salazar, Franco), neoliberalism imposed by military force (Pinochet, the military junta in Argentina), etc.
“Authoritarian liberalism” was possible cause it was acceptable in the eyes of Washington within the framework of the Cold War—it was that or new Cubas emerging.
Within the current liberal progressive order, any turn to the right that at least attempts to impose classical liberal principles will be seen and treated as “fascism.” Bolsonaro ended up imprisoned precisely because there is not yet a geopolitical configuration favorable to the emergence of strong political individualities in the right. Those of the past were tolerated because communism needed to be contained. Today’s Russia and China are not ideological threats that need to be stopped by a strong hand.
A lot of it just boils down to, as you allude, the difference between LKY and Orban's human capital and broader economical climate. LKY operated in post-1950 East Asia, where all noncommunist countries experienced skyrocketing prosperity. His wards were tough and hardworking. Orban's wards had started off as not very bright Hungarian peasants (most of those Hungarian intellectual achievements came from Hungarian Jews,) then had the lives sucked out of them by half a century of Communism, followed by 20 years of total post Cold War decay.
As for the US, I feel like it might have one dead cat bounce left in it.
In many ways it's the opposite if you read the article. The peasants were in Singapore, as per LKY's own complaints. Most Asian states didn't have similar growth to Singapore, e.g., neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia didn't, even under noncommunist rule. Your claim RE the Hungarian population base is false given IQ and other scores, and it's not historically accurate to say most of the achievements in Hungary came from Jews. They are a highly gifted people if you do a global comparison (and certainly, e.g., compared to most Jewish populations in Israel, though I know you're only referring to Ashk) and Orban didn't have the same internal problems and challenges LKY did.
Southeast Asian states like Malaysia, Indonesia are not the relevant points of comparison, because their population is lackadaisical brown jungle people. The core Singapore population was South Chinese, and their peasants are very hard working and entrepreneurial-I went to school with many Fukianese and Hakka, and they are not "peasants" in the East European white nog "let my house burn, but I'll get drunk first" sense. Their peasant nature was perhaps expressed in uncouthness, but not in a disinterest in education, business opportunity. Of course, Cambridge educated LKY looked down on their hawking, spitting, yelling boorishness, but he knew that in terms of economic productivity, they were pure gold.
Regarding Hungarians, they're a Balkan-adjacent East European agricultural people. The vast majority of Hungarian Nobel Prize laureates are Jewish, in full or part. Of the ethnic Hungarian minority, half were from old aristocrat stock. Nothing wrong with Balkan-adjacent peasants, nice to drink rakija and discuss dog breeds with, but they're inherently not a very intellectual or entrepreneurial people. Silly to expect that, after two world wars and half a century of Communism followed by two decades of the country being a giant whorehouse for German sex tourists, "mo money fo dem programs" would turn the place into a tech and commerce powerhouse. They're far from a nation of watchmakers... welding sounds about right.
Finally, regarding your dig at the non-Ashkenazi Israeli Jews, I will not go into speculation about how much your personal background drives your opinion. For me, in my decade of working in Israeli high tech, every company I've worked at had had Mizrahim in technical positions. About half had backgrounds in technological IDF programs-8200, 81, MAMRAM, the submarine fleet, etc. No Ethiopians, though. There are more lumpen and prole Mizrahim than Ashkenazim, and more STEM Ashkenazim than Mizrahim, but it's not a vast gulf. Big overlap in the Bell Curves.
Neighboring Malaysia is mostly Muslim trash. Its put upon productive Chinese minority has been fleeing to Singapore for generations, providing constant influx of human talent to Singapore that isn't home grown.
Hungary as an average white IQ score at best, maybe slightly lower. It lived through a century of turmoil and communism.
“all noncommunist countries experienced skyrocketing prosperity.” South Korea up until 1990 had a GNP comparable to North Korea, despite being proximate to Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The Philippines under Marcos also can hardly be considered as having “experienced skyrocketing prosperity.” Perhaps it is not this country or that which needs qualification, so much as your word “all.”
Adjusted for bullshit North Korean statistics, South Korean GDP per capita overtook that of the North in the 1960s. In the sixties and seventies, it had a sustained growth of about 10% per year.
Like the Indonesians and Malay, the Filipinos are brown jungle people, and their economy reflects it.
South Korea's GDP/capita in 1960 was 80 bucks a year. North was 200 bucks. The south didn't overtake the north until 75 or so, after decades of Park Chung Hee cracking the whip.
Malaysia is like 25% Chinese (you should look at a map of where Singapore is), and they do all the useful work the last time I visited. They're not as prosperous as Singapore because they're not as well led.
Singapore is geographically a Southeast Asian country, and demographically an East Asian one, which caused its falling out with its neighbor. Its economic patterns are East Asian. I don't know what the nitpicking is about.
FWIIW 1975 Korea GDP/capita was about 600 bucks. Singapore was 2500. I'm nitpicking because you're a retard who doesn't understand how the world works. I've spent time in these places, done business with them. South Korea was hellishly corrupt (and poor) until Park opened up the Chaebol system and sent the population to "honesty reeducation camps." It's still dominated by this system (which he cribbed from the Japanese) though the little guy does OK now.
Malaysia, despite having 3-4x more Chinese, enormous oil wealth and being an actual country rather than a city state, lags behind Singapore because the legal system is fairly arbitrary and doesn't allow people to build businesses as easily as Singapore does. Basically it was led by ethnic nepotists rather than the best damn Englishman east of the Suez.
While I'm not some smarmy jagoff with a physics degree who writes tldr posts the upshot of every single one is that he's way smarter and cooler than you'd think, I have been around the world, speak multiple languages fluently, etc. and have a pretty decent grasp on how things work.
South Korea was hellishly corrupt and poor for a while after going through an apocalyptic decade. Then it wasn't. Places populated by smart, diligent, hardworking people with access to modern tech and markets tend to become wealthy and orderly, unless you work really hard to keep them from doing so. Like North Korea or China until Deng loosened up the economic screws.
Malaysia lags behind Singapore because it's run by brown jungle Muslims in brown jungle Muslim fashion. It's literally that simple. It's true that, with a wise enough leader driving a ruthless enough policy for decades, it could be massively improved.
Yes but, importantly, they were part of the sum of “all noncommunist countries.” You didn’t say “all noncommunist countries not full of brown jungle people,” you said “all noncommunist countries.” Perhaps you should also try checking your original goalposts before posting them, so you don’t have to move them later to prove you “weren’t either wrong, so there!”
LKY had a city state sitting on the worlds most perfect trade nexus and over a billion co-ethnics with 105 IQs he could import with little effort to achieve his goals.
Hungary was a mediocre tier Warsaw Pact country that bet big on manufacturing and got fucked by the Ukraine War cutting off its energy inputs.
I have all sorts of criticisms of Hungarian policy, but I never pretend these are comparable situations.
This is an ahistorical claim RE Chinese populations, that's answered in the article. LKY and the Singaporean leadership certainly didn't think they had a gifted population base, and Hungary's geopolitical challenges and internal problems were nowhere near as dire as what LKY faced.
"LKY and the Singaporean leadership certainly didn't think they had a gifted population base"
That is definitely not true, not even close. The guy was a Chinese supremecist and knew it.
"Hungary's geopolitical challenges and internal problems were nowhere near as dire as what LKY faced."
Singapore faced strong early transitional challenges that could have derailed it, but gigantic long term structural tailwinds that were at its back once they got past that.
Look, I'm a huge LKY fanboy. I made a stop there on my honeymoon to check it out. I just think that a lot of what happens relates to the specific context of the time and place in question, rather then there being obviously copyable and scalable universal solutions.
Yeah, sure, but I suspect that Orban is a pretty good judge of the potential of Current Year Hungarians.
Machiavelli gives this advice, that when internal problems get big enough, your best bet is to temporize and ride them out, because your countermeasures will cause them to get bigger, faster, and ultimately bring about the very end you're trying to avoid.
All the more reason to find the needles in the haystack— that minority of exceptional talent is why Brazil and India can punch above their weight, and imo they both could go much farther if they followed LKY and (re)created their true elite
As to the last point, Machiavelli is excellent but I don’t see the concrete idea in your restatement. As you wrote it, it could apply to literally anything
it's so evident that you people didn't read the article. maybe you should before arguing in the comments. he quotes LKY as both a chinese racist and as saying singapore's population is descended from peasant stock. it's insane how many people blatantly ignore articles they comment on on this platform.
You wrote, "I’m not aware of any serious efforts on the part of Populists and Populist-Conservatives and National-Conservatives or whatever to provide a genuinely inspiring vision of the future or of good life. More concretely they don’t fight to take on America’s wretched anti-meritocratic laws, regulations, and general corporate culture, nor do they appear to have any intention of doing so. (The changes Trump would have to make here, which would include taking on Female Privilege, would cause an outcry far bigger than his opposition to migration.) As far as I can see both Ben Shapiro and Tucker, and those “in between” offer varieties of humiliation-as-success."
I should note that the Trump Administration has made an enormous push to restore meritocratic hiring in the federal government--and these changes are concrete and real.
Historically, the United States had an excellent civil-service exam; however, we abandoned it during the Carter administration because it produced a disparate impact. The abandonment of the civil-service exam resulted from a consent decree in a legal case known as Luevano. Since nearly all standardized tests cause disparate impact, the Luevano consent decree has prevented the federal government from using the old civil-service exam selection mechanism (or developing a new one), and the federal government replaced the civil-service exam with much worse selection mechanisms. For example, reviewing resumes by checklist. Trump II rescinded the Luevano consent decree.
Ending Luevano was only the first step, taken early in the Trump Administration. Scott Kupor, the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (and a highly capable individual with a background in Silicon Valley), leads the efforts here. Their Substack, https://substack.com/@usopm, documents their progress.
Apples to oranges, apples to oranges. Orban's project was actually more ambitious than that of LKY, building a nationalist state within the EU tyranny. Remember the constant harassment he got for not accepting refugees and then imagine what would've happened if he wanted to introduce some soft eugenics. LKY had the luxury of ruling a remote, Asiatic island and having actual authoritarian control so he could do pretty much whatever he wanted; Orban couldn't. I also didn't expect muh GDP muh economic growth talk from you, BAP.
Enjoyed this read, though I think you're mischaracterizing a few things. Responding from the pov of a young white guy in the US and generally skipping the Orban comparison (other than to say, I would much rather be a young person, Hungarian or expat, living in Hungary today than in Singapore):
First, "physical labor" work as you characterize it, and as it has existed through the industrial revolution up to today, is such a tiny fraction of labor that it essentially does not exist. A factory job today is largely interfacing with computer screens and controlling robots. This will be the norm in 10 years. Modern "factory work" is akin to world building and probably lost on intellectuals / academics. Comparing Singapore, a services based finance hub (with arguably zero upward mobility today relative to the past), to the US, is not just apples to oranges it's retarded.
Second, if you'd argue that "the American Conservative movement lacks an inspiring vision for the future" and the solution is something akin to modern day Singapore - a bland menagerie of corporate structures and entertainment - HARD PASS. I'd rather build rockets and road trip through the American west. Perhaps you spend too much time listening to conservative influencers who themselves haven't built/done anything of consequence.
Last: "There’s nothing wrong with attracting foreign investment and getting industry to offshore to your country." Indeed is nothing inherently "wrong" other than you sacrifice sovereignty. That's not a bargain the US can or should make. IMO Singapore will ultimately suffer the same fate as HK; under Chinese control. Whether this is right/wrong or "bad" is a matter of perspective.
Orbán kept much of Western Europe’s problems out of this country, but he didn’t do anything constructive for the Hungarian people. There were a brief “Golden Years” with strong economic growth, but none of it was forward-thinking. There was never a plan for the Budapest-economy to be carried into the future. Just factory jobs for the provincial (BMW and battery factories) and some HR outsource, but no investment into tech sector/etc. In fact, his cronies squandered EU tech grants with fraudulent companies. I worked at one of these companies briefly, got half my salary as cash in an envelope (avoiding payroll taxes), nothing was achieved before the company shut down a few years later.
Well said. The anti-meritocracy has been a quiet rot at the heart of American culture.
I'll just harp on one item - college admissions - and actually a sub-item, the SAT test.
The pre-1995 SAT was mathematically much less forgiving, and a perfect score was an incredibly rare statistical anomaly (circa 10 perfect 1600s a year nationally as of 1987). Today, a perfect score is achieved by around 7000 students a year rather than a handful. (Yes there are more test takers now, but now 0.4% of students get a perfect 1600, vs <0.001% in 1987)
In 1995, the scores were "reweighted" and the precision of top scores was effectively destroyed. What was once a razor-sharp instrument designed to identify extraordinary mathematical and verbal reasoning became a blunt tool, artificially compressing the right tail of the bell curve.
This is not really about the perfect scorers, but the loss of granularity. Before 1995, a score of 750 on the math section signaled a fundamentally different tier of cognitive abstraction than a 700. The test has stopped doing its primary job: differentiating talent at the absolute highest level.
We replaced a meritocratic ladder with a gated community. Of course the 'left' wanted this change so they could focus even more on 'holistic' admissions - eg group preferences - but in general all society went along with the situation - there is also a measure of corruption in that those parents with sufficient 'social capital' were happy with this change as well. I'm not even making an argument against a bit of an 'aristocratic' tinge at the top universities in regards to admissions - but we already have legacy and athletic admissions for that. We need the granularity of admissions testing back.
There's also massive cheating and gaming of the new SAT. It shouldn't be possible to prepare for these exams to the extent it's possible today anyway. Also admissions should in my opinion be based exclusively on battery of exams.
Exams including wrestling, biathlon
Good essay.
A couple of comments:
"In fact, 19th-century liberalism is in many cases synonymous with nationalist projects, such as the unification of Germany and Italy." - True as that may be, certain ideas and myths harbor a latent seed of destruction that only bears fruit when conditions become favorable. Consider how Christianity, though once invigorated by a pagan ethos that enabled Europe to flourish, nonetheless carried the nascent seeds of the decay we observe today. Probably, liberalism also carries such a seed.
Regarding "manual workers": Europe also needs people who are less inclined toward intellectual work. Perhaps with AI this will eventually become largely redundant, but it was certainly still important under Orbán. There are two solutions to this: either a society "produces" these people itself, or it has to import them, because, like it or not, it’s not possible to live solely on engineers, philosophers and artists.
I agree with the assessment that conservative American influences have somewhat shaped Orbán’s latest strategy and positions, which has been largely harmful to european right-wing movements. This even had some farcical moments like the most recent CPAC event in Hungary in March of this year, which opened with the American national anthem, to the astonishment of many of the European nationalists in attendance.
Re: the "nascent seed": This is an argument I used to be very taken by esp. in my orthodox NRX days but have become less influenced by as I came to realize just how Hegelian it all is. Christianity is inherently egalitarian by virtue of its theology. Liberalism is not, and very little in the work of early liberals expressed any of the tendencies we see in modern leftism. There's a kind of consequentialism here hinging on Hegelian metaphysics that fails to recognize that everything is, in reality, in flux, and a shift at one point in the geneaology of an idea could totally transform that idea. Hitler transformed liberalism by pushing it away from explicit population control (eugenics) and a liberalism closer ideologically to Bonapartism or Fascism can certainly be imagined had things turned out slightly differently.
Yeah agreed. To believe otherwise is to disparage the bedrock of the anglo decentralist tendencies (the Germanic thread?) and yarvin himself wud prolly agree too despite keeping the dumb interpretation available for politically expedient purposes
You should do an article on AI, Singapore style white collar arbitrage might be impossible soon. Actual natural resources will be far more valuable.
I'd add to this that Orban pivoted Hungary heavily towards foreign tourism, which probably factored into his policy of suppressing the forint's value. I lived in Budapest from 2017-2018 and while I enjoyed it, I was also coming from the perspective of an American living off an American wage. For young Hungarians, Orbanistan was a miserable place with no opportunity. They had already turned on Orban by 2018; Jobbik was the most popular party among youth at that point.
I last visited Budapest in 2022 and was disgusted with what had become of it. The increasing foreigner presence drove me out of Hungary in the first place; hearing drunk British stag partiers yelling outside of my apartment at 10pm on a weeknight was not my idea of fun. But in 2022, pretty much everything fun about the city was gone. Orban bought into the COVID scam like every other boomer leader and small business was crushed. All the places I used to hang out at were gone. And everywhere downtown, I heard nothing but English. Deak Ferenc ter was a sea of American and Canadians yammering away. Many were tourists, sure, but I can't imagine a young Hungarian felt much better about his city being colonized by white Canadian women snapping selfies on a group tour then I do about Times Square or Penn Station being a Babel-esque nightmare of foreigners.
Orban held onto power in part because he could at least convincingly portray himself as being a solid defender of the country's interests on the foreign stage. He swept to power after the Socialist government crashed the economy and indebted Hungary to the IMF; he held on through the migrant invasion of a decade ago and got a last wind in 2022 by playing on Hungarian concerns about the Ukraine war. But his bag of tricks ran out. The fact that it was an ex-Fidesz politician who dethroned him makes sense, as Magyar knew how to play to Hungarian sensibilities in a way that the clown-car leftist opposition and Jobbik/Mi Hazank dullards could not.
Yes. Very good
Very good
!!
First.
LKY is the product of a historical era in which the polarized geopolitical forces (USA and USSR) helped catalyze radical right-wing experimentalisms in politics: trad fascism (Salazar, Franco), neoliberalism imposed by military force (Pinochet, the military junta in Argentina), etc.
“Authoritarian liberalism” was possible cause it was acceptable in the eyes of Washington within the framework of the Cold War—it was that or new Cubas emerging.
Within the current liberal progressive order, any turn to the right that at least attempts to impose classical liberal principles will be seen and treated as “fascism.” Bolsonaro ended up imprisoned precisely because there is not yet a geopolitical configuration favorable to the emergence of strong political individualities in the right. Those of the past were tolerated because communism needed to be contained. Today’s Russia and China are not ideological threats that need to be stopped by a strong hand.
A lot of it just boils down to, as you allude, the difference between LKY and Orban's human capital and broader economical climate. LKY operated in post-1950 East Asia, where all noncommunist countries experienced skyrocketing prosperity. His wards were tough and hardworking. Orban's wards had started off as not very bright Hungarian peasants (most of those Hungarian intellectual achievements came from Hungarian Jews,) then had the lives sucked out of them by half a century of Communism, followed by 20 years of total post Cold War decay.
As for the US, I feel like it might have one dead cat bounce left in it.
In many ways it's the opposite if you read the article. The peasants were in Singapore, as per LKY's own complaints. Most Asian states didn't have similar growth to Singapore, e.g., neighboring Malaysia and Indonesia didn't, even under noncommunist rule. Your claim RE the Hungarian population base is false given IQ and other scores, and it's not historically accurate to say most of the achievements in Hungary came from Jews. They are a highly gifted people if you do a global comparison (and certainly, e.g., compared to most Jewish populations in Israel, though I know you're only referring to Ashk) and Orban didn't have the same internal problems and challenges LKY did.
Southeast Asian states like Malaysia, Indonesia are not the relevant points of comparison, because their population is lackadaisical brown jungle people. The core Singapore population was South Chinese, and their peasants are very hard working and entrepreneurial-I went to school with many Fukianese and Hakka, and they are not "peasants" in the East European white nog "let my house burn, but I'll get drunk first" sense. Their peasant nature was perhaps expressed in uncouthness, but not in a disinterest in education, business opportunity. Of course, Cambridge educated LKY looked down on their hawking, spitting, yelling boorishness, but he knew that in terms of economic productivity, they were pure gold.
Regarding Hungarians, they're a Balkan-adjacent East European agricultural people. The vast majority of Hungarian Nobel Prize laureates are Jewish, in full or part. Of the ethnic Hungarian minority, half were from old aristocrat stock. Nothing wrong with Balkan-adjacent peasants, nice to drink rakija and discuss dog breeds with, but they're inherently not a very intellectual or entrepreneurial people. Silly to expect that, after two world wars and half a century of Communism followed by two decades of the country being a giant whorehouse for German sex tourists, "mo money fo dem programs" would turn the place into a tech and commerce powerhouse. They're far from a nation of watchmakers... welding sounds about right.
Finally, regarding your dig at the non-Ashkenazi Israeli Jews, I will not go into speculation about how much your personal background drives your opinion. For me, in my decade of working in Israeli high tech, every company I've worked at had had Mizrahim in technical positions. About half had backgrounds in technological IDF programs-8200, 81, MAMRAM, the submarine fleet, etc. No Ethiopians, though. There are more lumpen and prole Mizrahim than Ashkenazim, and more STEM Ashkenazim than Mizrahim, but it's not a vast gulf. Big overlap in the Bell Curves.
Spot on description of the southern Chinese. Definitely not a "civilized" group on a surface level but boy could they hustle.
Neighboring Malaysia is mostly Muslim trash. Its put upon productive Chinese minority has been fleeing to Singapore for generations, providing constant influx of human talent to Singapore that isn't home grown.
Hungary as an average white IQ score at best, maybe slightly lower. It lived through a century of turmoil and communism.
“all noncommunist countries experienced skyrocketing prosperity.” South Korea up until 1990 had a GNP comparable to North Korea, despite being proximate to Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The Philippines under Marcos also can hardly be considered as having “experienced skyrocketing prosperity.” Perhaps it is not this country or that which needs qualification, so much as your word “all.”
Adjusted for bullshit North Korean statistics, South Korean GDP per capita overtook that of the North in the 1960s. In the sixties and seventies, it had a sustained growth of about 10% per year.
Like the Indonesians and Malay, the Filipinos are brown jungle people, and their economy reflects it.
South Korea's GDP/capita in 1960 was 80 bucks a year. North was 200 bucks. The south didn't overtake the north until 75 or so, after decades of Park Chung Hee cracking the whip.
Malaysia is like 25% Chinese (you should look at a map of where Singapore is), and they do all the useful work the last time I visited. They're not as prosperous as Singapore because they're not as well led.
Post-1962, South Korean GDP per capita took off and sustained constant growth: https://econscope.com/economies/korea-rep/gdp-real-per-capita
Singapore is geographically a Southeast Asian country, and demographically an East Asian one, which caused its falling out with its neighbor. Its economic patterns are East Asian. I don't know what the nitpicking is about.
FWIIW 1975 Korea GDP/capita was about 600 bucks. Singapore was 2500. I'm nitpicking because you're a retard who doesn't understand how the world works. I've spent time in these places, done business with them. South Korea was hellishly corrupt (and poor) until Park opened up the Chaebol system and sent the population to "honesty reeducation camps." It's still dominated by this system (which he cribbed from the Japanese) though the little guy does OK now.
Malaysia, despite having 3-4x more Chinese, enormous oil wealth and being an actual country rather than a city state, lags behind Singapore because the legal system is fairly arbitrary and doesn't allow people to build businesses as easily as Singapore does. Basically it was led by ethnic nepotists rather than the best damn Englishman east of the Suez.
While I'm not some smarmy jagoff with a physics degree who writes tldr posts the upshot of every single one is that he's way smarter and cooler than you'd think, I have been around the world, speak multiple languages fluently, etc. and have a pretty decent grasp on how things work.
South Korea was hellishly corrupt and poor for a while after going through an apocalyptic decade. Then it wasn't. Places populated by smart, diligent, hardworking people with access to modern tech and markets tend to become wealthy and orderly, unless you work really hard to keep them from doing so. Like North Korea or China until Deng loosened up the economic screws.
Malaysia lags behind Singapore because it's run by brown jungle Muslims in brown jungle Muslim fashion. It's literally that simple. It's true that, with a wise enough leader driving a ruthless enough policy for decades, it could be massively improved.
Yes but, importantly, they were part of the sum of “all noncommunist countries.” You didn’t say “all noncommunist countries not full of brown jungle people,” you said “all noncommunist countries.” Perhaps you should also try checking your original goalposts before posting them, so you don’t have to move them later to prove you “weren’t either wrong, so there!”
Do I have to go into the distinction between Southeast Asia and East Asia? Do you really have to be a nudnik? Does it make you feel special?
Perfect summary.
LKY had a city state sitting on the worlds most perfect trade nexus and over a billion co-ethnics with 105 IQs he could import with little effort to achieve his goals.
Hungary was a mediocre tier Warsaw Pact country that bet big on manufacturing and got fucked by the Ukraine War cutting off its energy inputs.
I have all sorts of criticisms of Hungarian policy, but I never pretend these are comparable situations.
This is an ahistorical claim RE Chinese populations, that's answered in the article. LKY and the Singaporean leadership certainly didn't think they had a gifted population base, and Hungary's geopolitical challenges and internal problems were nowhere near as dire as what LKY faced.
"LKY and the Singaporean leadership certainly didn't think they had a gifted population base"
That is definitely not true, not even close. The guy was a Chinese supremecist and knew it.
"Hungary's geopolitical challenges and internal problems were nowhere near as dire as what LKY faced."
Singapore faced strong early transitional challenges that could have derailed it, but gigantic long term structural tailwinds that were at its back once they got past that.
Look, I'm a huge LKY fanboy. I made a stop there on my honeymoon to check it out. I just think that a lot of what happens relates to the specific context of the time and place in question, rather then there being obviously copyable and scalable universal solutions.
I could go either way on the facts, I also suspect BAP underrates the Chinese.
But it’s irrelevant to the argument because Orban did not even consider building a cadre of elite talent, or vision of a real future.
He just kept the old bureaucratic Soviet order going, repackaged with Christian bells and whistles.
Yeah, sure, but I suspect that Orban is a pretty good judge of the potential of Current Year Hungarians.
Machiavelli gives this advice, that when internal problems get big enough, your best bet is to temporize and ride them out, because your countermeasures will cause them to get bigger, faster, and ultimately bring about the very end you're trying to avoid.
All the more reason to find the needles in the haystack— that minority of exceptional talent is why Brazil and India can punch above their weight, and imo they both could go much farther if they followed LKY and (re)created their true elite
As to the last point, Machiavelli is excellent but I don’t see the concrete idea in your restatement. As you wrote it, it could apply to literally anything
it's so evident that you people didn't read the article. maybe you should before arguing in the comments. he quotes LKY as both a chinese racist and as saying singapore's population is descended from peasant stock. it's insane how many people blatantly ignore articles they comment on on this platform.
“all noncommunist countries in east Asia”. Boy, that was soooooo difficult
You wrote, "I’m not aware of any serious efforts on the part of Populists and Populist-Conservatives and National-Conservatives or whatever to provide a genuinely inspiring vision of the future or of good life. More concretely they don’t fight to take on America’s wretched anti-meritocratic laws, regulations, and general corporate culture, nor do they appear to have any intention of doing so. (The changes Trump would have to make here, which would include taking on Female Privilege, would cause an outcry far bigger than his opposition to migration.) As far as I can see both Ben Shapiro and Tucker, and those “in between” offer varieties of humiliation-as-success."
I should note that the Trump Administration has made an enormous push to restore meritocratic hiring in the federal government--and these changes are concrete and real.
Historically, the United States had an excellent civil-service exam; however, we abandoned it during the Carter administration because it produced a disparate impact. The abandonment of the civil-service exam resulted from a consent decree in a legal case known as Luevano. Since nearly all standardized tests cause disparate impact, the Luevano consent decree has prevented the federal government from using the old civil-service exam selection mechanism (or developing a new one), and the federal government replaced the civil-service exam with much worse selection mechanisms. For example, reviewing resumes by checklist. Trump II rescinded the Luevano consent decree.
Ending Luevano was only the first step, taken early in the Trump Administration. Scott Kupor, the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (and a highly capable individual with a background in Silicon Valley), leads the efforts here. Their Substack, https://substack.com/@usopm, documents their progress.
LKY really was the GOAT
I’m not reading all that shit
Nitzschean
Apples to oranges, apples to oranges. Orban's project was actually more ambitious than that of LKY, building a nationalist state within the EU tyranny. Remember the constant harassment he got for not accepting refugees and then imagine what would've happened if he wanted to introduce some soft eugenics. LKY had the luxury of ruling a remote, Asiatic island and having actual authoritarian control so he could do pretty much whatever he wanted; Orban couldn't. I also didn't expect muh GDP muh economic growth talk from you, BAP.
Enjoyed this read, though I think you're mischaracterizing a few things. Responding from the pov of a young white guy in the US and generally skipping the Orban comparison (other than to say, I would much rather be a young person, Hungarian or expat, living in Hungary today than in Singapore):
First, "physical labor" work as you characterize it, and as it has existed through the industrial revolution up to today, is such a tiny fraction of labor that it essentially does not exist. A factory job today is largely interfacing with computer screens and controlling robots. This will be the norm in 10 years. Modern "factory work" is akin to world building and probably lost on intellectuals / academics. Comparing Singapore, a services based finance hub (with arguably zero upward mobility today relative to the past), to the US, is not just apples to oranges it's retarded.
Second, if you'd argue that "the American Conservative movement lacks an inspiring vision for the future" and the solution is something akin to modern day Singapore - a bland menagerie of corporate structures and entertainment - HARD PASS. I'd rather build rockets and road trip through the American west. Perhaps you spend too much time listening to conservative influencers who themselves haven't built/done anything of consequence.
Last: "There’s nothing wrong with attracting foreign investment and getting industry to offshore to your country." Indeed is nothing inherently "wrong" other than you sacrifice sovereignty. That's not a bargain the US can or should make. IMO Singapore will ultimately suffer the same fate as HK; under Chinese control. Whether this is right/wrong or "bad" is a matter of perspective.
Orbán kept much of Western Europe’s problems out of this country, but he didn’t do anything constructive for the Hungarian people. There were a brief “Golden Years” with strong economic growth, but none of it was forward-thinking. There was never a plan for the Budapest-economy to be carried into the future. Just factory jobs for the provincial (BMW and battery factories) and some HR outsource, but no investment into tech sector/etc. In fact, his cronies squandered EU tech grants with fraudulent companies. I worked at one of these companies briefly, got half my salary as cash in an envelope (avoiding payroll taxes), nothing was achieved before the company shut down a few years later.