The Singapore Story

Split across two large volumes, Lee Kuan Yew tells the story of how Singapore went from a third world British colony to one of the major political and economic powers in Asia in just a few decades. The first volume is more autobiographical and covers the early history of Lee and the Singapore he grew up in: a racially diverse, but Chinese-dominated British colony. It then goes on to describe the Japanese occupation during WWII, Lee’s own education in Singapore and then at Cambridge, and of the founding of the People’s Action Party (PAP) and the ensuing conflicts with communists and later Malaysia in the 50s and 60s. The second volume covers the period after Singapore became an independent nation in 1965, of the economic and political feats that Lee’s cabinet had pulled off to bring foreign investment into the city-state and industrialize to first-world standards, as well as interesting international relations tidbits that Lee had involved himself in after becoming a head of state.

I became interested in Singapore due to its exceedingly good standing politically and economically as of current. It’s an economic hub that is progressive socially (especially with its true multiculturalism and multiracial citizens) and center-right economically which makes it favored by investors and entrepreneurs alike - plus, it doesn’t have a complicated history with China which means it’s less likely to suffer a great crackdown as China had inflicted on Hong Kong and may soon inflict on Taiwan. Singapore is the best modern example of an enlightened and benevolent dictator bringing efficacy to government and prosperity to people. Lee’s pragmatic, center-right PAP made foreign investment flow in and reassured them that its political systems are stable and governed by rule of law, while the tough authoritarianism did not devolve into tyranny because the government culture was set correctly from the top. Whether Singapore remains this way is doubtful since authoritarianism is known to cause great progress just as it’s caused great catastrophes, but what Lee had done in his years is something I want to replicate on an economic level in company building to whatever extent those lessons carry over. On tech companies that I’m versed in, the biggest and greatest are all autocratic: Jobs’ Apple, Zuckerberg’s Meta, Spiegel’s Snapchat, Gates’ Microsoft, Bezos' Amazon, Ellison’s Oracle, Benioff’s Salesforce, Musk’s Tesla. My theory is that it’s this case because it’s most efficient, and because companies have a much shorter life cycle, measured by decades and not by centuries (older companies either get reinvented under a new autocrat or fade into irrelevance). Those benevolent dictators can often outlive their companies, and therefore while they’re in their prime, authoritarianism is the most efficient way to do things. For governments, where stability of policy often matters more than speed or innovation after a nation’s been developed, Singapore’s position could change and it could change very quickly, but its current prosperity and good government increasingly makes me want to explore living there.