A perceptive article like rest of your work since I started following them since 2017. I like the framing of the challenges in terms of a "trilemma", a lexicon borrowed from other disciplines such as international economics concerning having a fixed foreign exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity). While I broadly agree with your application of the trilemma onto the UK situation, you have misinterpreted the Singaporean situation. The Singapore government under Lee Kuan Yew did not choose to preserve non-selective immigration and social stability by sacrificing civil liberties on the general populace. First, Singapore's immigration is and has long been highly selective, granting visas to only highly skilled or highly educated people and in a separate system, to low skilled labourers who fill jobs which Singaporeans do not want to take up, or are too well educated to contemplate taking those jobs. Secondly, during the decades when Lee Kuan Yew was prime minister, civil liberties on all sorts of issues were curtailed due to a paternalistic and illiberal ideology under the banner of "Asian values" (http://www.cafefle.org/texteskkkmg-icc_articles/13_Singapore_26p-Pol%20copie.pdf). Their curtailment was not due to the need to accommodate non-selective immigration, which was never the practice in Singapore since independence. The enforcement of racial quotas in housing, and in parliamentary representation was to maintain racial harmony from the beginning of Singapore as an independent nation, when its citizens were already multicultural and multi-ethnic (say, around 70% Chinese, 20% Malay, 10% Indians) due to preceding generations of migration into the Malay Peninsula.
Lee Kuan Yew since the 1990s has expressed views on racial differences among Singapore residents due to genetics and culture, which in the early 1990s would be deemed politically incorrect if a British or American politician said the same about their own populations, and be deemed outright racist and fascist if said in the present day. In the lengthy interviews he gave a couple of years before his death, as candid words of wisdom to pass onto the nation, especially the younger generations, he lamented cultural problems with the Muslim Malay populace, making them economically backward relatively (e.g. see https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011%2F12%2F10%2F181861; https://youtu.be/ihiE4oGyYlQ?t=1898).
I think it is informative to examine Singapore's migration situation and trends, and the challenges it presents, and how the government tries to tackle them, and the attitude of the populace to mass migration. It's population has increased from 3.5mln in 1995 to 5.6mln in 2020, an increase of 60%. For context, compare with UK's increase of about 20% during the same period - an increase deemed excessive and unsustainable by the political Right.
Thanks for the detailed comment. You are right. I didn't mean to imply that Singapore was ethnically homogeneous when it gained independence, or that Singapore has practiced non-selective immigration. A more general way of stating my argument would be to say that you can pick two out of the following three: social stability, civil liberties, ethnic diversity.
I agree that Singapore is an ethnically diverse city state. However, I remain sceptical whether Singapore's curtailment of civil liberties of the sort traditionally valued in Western liberal democracies - across a range of public policies unrelated to its ethnic demographics - could be characterised as an effort to maintain social stability and ethnic diversity, and hence could be cited as an example of the diversity trilemma. As I see it, there is a consensus held by proponents and critics of the Singapore political system, that it could be aptly described as paternalistic, illiberal, conformist, and socially micro-managed (while maintaining favourable environment for domestic and international businesses - an economic feature Brexiteers had in mind when they aspired Britain to become "Singapore on the Thames"). Singapore like many democratic and market orientated Asian countries, never had the pretensions of Western liberals about the values of classical liberalism (e.g. freedom of speech, negative liberty to do anything so long as it doesn't infringe on others' freedoms). While one could lament UK's "foregone civil liberties", Singapore never had them in the first place. Against the backdrop of the many societal restrictions (e.g. ban on selling chewing gums, media censorship on certain domestic issues, the governing party's practice of suing critics in the courts and bankrupting them, indefinite detention without trial remains on the statutes, the technical illegality of homosexual sex until 2022, strict laws against possession of narcotics including the soft drugs like cannabis which is tolerated in the West, caning for antisocial behaviour such as vandalism, government-sanctioned surveillance, lack of right to strike), Singapore's blasphemy laws are relatively modest. Unlike the one-sided application of "non-crime" hate incidents in the UK such as the Quran defacement incident, Singapore's blasphemy laws are applied even-handedly to protect all the major religions practised in Singapore including Christianity. There have been cases of Singaporeans being charged for producing offensive materials against Christianity - which never happens in UK. If something like the Wakefield Quran incident occurs in Singapore, the police is unlikely to have deemed it a violation of blasphemy laws.
Two options of the trilemma are social stability and civil liberties. What third option would complete the trilemma for your argument to work? Your original post identifies non-selective immigration. In response to my comment, you modified your argument to substitute in ethnic diversity to make the argument applicable to Singapore. In light of your discussion of Singapore's blasphemy laws, a diversity trilemma argument also works with religious diversity. Observations of societies around the world with experience of multiculturalism or sustained immigration, suggest tensions can arise between groups distinguished by religion or ethnicity. When they arise, these tensions need to be managed and measures implemented to maintain social stability. However, I am not persuaded that the required measures inevitably undermine civil liberties. There are cosmopolitan multi-ethnic cities around the world (e.g. Sydney) which enjoy social stability and civil liberties, where the ethnic groups live peacefully alongside each other.
I meant ethnic diversity in a very general sense (including religious diversity, since my original example referred to Muslims in Britain). And I agree that not all such diversity portends an erosion of civil liberties. My understanding is that Australia heavily selects for educated migrants, which may be one reason why Sydney is more successful.
We see now why the Soviets and their satellites persecuted dissenters--because the system unravels if you don’t.
A perceptive article like rest of your work since I started following them since 2017. I like the framing of the challenges in terms of a "trilemma", a lexicon borrowed from other disciplines such as international economics concerning having a fixed foreign exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity). While I broadly agree with your application of the trilemma onto the UK situation, you have misinterpreted the Singaporean situation. The Singapore government under Lee Kuan Yew did not choose to preserve non-selective immigration and social stability by sacrificing civil liberties on the general populace. First, Singapore's immigration is and has long been highly selective, granting visas to only highly skilled or highly educated people and in a separate system, to low skilled labourers who fill jobs which Singaporeans do not want to take up, or are too well educated to contemplate taking those jobs. Secondly, during the decades when Lee Kuan Yew was prime minister, civil liberties on all sorts of issues were curtailed due to a paternalistic and illiberal ideology under the banner of "Asian values" (http://www.cafefle.org/texteskkkmg-icc_articles/13_Singapore_26p-Pol%20copie.pdf). Their curtailment was not due to the need to accommodate non-selective immigration, which was never the practice in Singapore since independence. The enforcement of racial quotas in housing, and in parliamentary representation was to maintain racial harmony from the beginning of Singapore as an independent nation, when its citizens were already multicultural and multi-ethnic (say, around 70% Chinese, 20% Malay, 10% Indians) due to preceding generations of migration into the Malay Peninsula.
The restrictions the country imposes on its low-skilled migrants laborforce, would be deemed inhumane and draconian in the Western world, such as forbidding the migrants to marry or have intimate relations with Singapore citizens and permanent residents, and living in segregated migrants dormitories (one could call them ghettos for migrants whose right to stay can be terminated at short notice): https://www.ricemedia.co/current-affairs-commentary-an-attempt-to-make-sense-of-the-migrant-worker-debate-thus-far/, https://spj.hkspublications.org/2020/03/06/illicit-intimacies/). One could say there is severe curtailment of civil liberties on those migrants.
Lee Kuan Yew since the 1990s has expressed views on racial differences among Singapore residents due to genetics and culture, which in the early 1990s would be deemed politically incorrect if a British or American politician said the same about their own populations, and be deemed outright racist and fascist if said in the present day. In the lengthy interviews he gave a couple of years before his death, as candid words of wisdom to pass onto the nation, especially the younger generations, he lamented cultural problems with the Muslim Malay populace, making them economically backward relatively (e.g. see https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011%2F12%2F10%2F181861; https://youtu.be/ihiE4oGyYlQ?t=1898).
Singapore is an English-speaking cosmopolitan city state. The politicians and commentariat pay attention to developments in Western world including the USA. As debates about "white privilege" is rampant in America, some commentators in Singapore has ported the notion to "Chinese privilege" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14631369.2020.1869519). The PAP unequivocally rejects it exists in Singapore: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/ndr-entirely-baseless-claim-chinese-privilege-exists-singapore-lee-hsien-loong-2143026.
I think it is informative to examine Singapore's migration situation and trends, and the challenges it presents, and how the government tries to tackle them, and the attitude of the populace to mass migration. It's population has increased from 3.5mln in 1995 to 5.6mln in 2020, an increase of 60%. For context, compare with UK's increase of about 20% during the same period - an increase deemed excessive and unsustainable by the political Right.
Thanks for the detailed comment. You are right. I didn't mean to imply that Singapore was ethnically homogeneous when it gained independence, or that Singapore has practiced non-selective immigration. A more general way of stating my argument would be to say that you can pick two out of the following three: social stability, civil liberties, ethnic diversity.
I agree that Singapore is an ethnically diverse city state. However, I remain sceptical whether Singapore's curtailment of civil liberties of the sort traditionally valued in Western liberal democracies - across a range of public policies unrelated to its ethnic demographics - could be characterised as an effort to maintain social stability and ethnic diversity, and hence could be cited as an example of the diversity trilemma. As I see it, there is a consensus held by proponents and critics of the Singapore political system, that it could be aptly described as paternalistic, illiberal, conformist, and socially micro-managed (while maintaining favourable environment for domestic and international businesses - an economic feature Brexiteers had in mind when they aspired Britain to become "Singapore on the Thames"). Singapore like many democratic and market orientated Asian countries, never had the pretensions of Western liberals about the values of classical liberalism (e.g. freedom of speech, negative liberty to do anything so long as it doesn't infringe on others' freedoms). While one could lament UK's "foregone civil liberties", Singapore never had them in the first place. Against the backdrop of the many societal restrictions (e.g. ban on selling chewing gums, media censorship on certain domestic issues, the governing party's practice of suing critics in the courts and bankrupting them, indefinite detention without trial remains on the statutes, the technical illegality of homosexual sex until 2022, strict laws against possession of narcotics including the soft drugs like cannabis which is tolerated in the West, caning for antisocial behaviour such as vandalism, government-sanctioned surveillance, lack of right to strike), Singapore's blasphemy laws are relatively modest. Unlike the one-sided application of "non-crime" hate incidents in the UK such as the Quran defacement incident, Singapore's blasphemy laws are applied even-handedly to protect all the major religions practised in Singapore including Christianity. There have been cases of Singaporeans being charged for producing offensive materials against Christianity - which never happens in UK. If something like the Wakefield Quran incident occurs in Singapore, the police is unlikely to have deemed it a violation of blasphemy laws.
Two options of the trilemma are social stability and civil liberties. What third option would complete the trilemma for your argument to work? Your original post identifies non-selective immigration. In response to my comment, you modified your argument to substitute in ethnic diversity to make the argument applicable to Singapore. In light of your discussion of Singapore's blasphemy laws, a diversity trilemma argument also works with religious diversity. Observations of societies around the world with experience of multiculturalism or sustained immigration, suggest tensions can arise between groups distinguished by religion or ethnicity. When they arise, these tensions need to be managed and measures implemented to maintain social stability. However, I am not persuaded that the required measures inevitably undermine civil liberties. There are cosmopolitan multi-ethnic cities around the world (e.g. Sydney) which enjoy social stability and civil liberties, where the ethnic groups live peacefully alongside each other.
I meant ethnic diversity in a very general sense (including religious diversity, since my original example referred to Muslims in Britain). And I agree that not all such diversity portends an erosion of civil liberties. My understanding is that Australia heavily selects for educated migrants, which may be one reason why Sydney is more successful.