Singapore

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I was reading about Singapore's relative success in terms of economic prosperity, and I came across something of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Singapore


is a highly developed capitalist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism) mixed economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy). While government intervention is kept at a minimum, government entities such as the sovereign wealth fund (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund) Temasek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temasek_Holdings) control corporations responsible for 60% of GDP.

The government has a majority share in company's that account for 60% of the country's GDP? That seems remarkably high. Does anyone have outside links that verify this number? The Heritage Foundation likes to champion Singapore as one of the most laissez faire countries in the world, but it looks to me the island benefits immensely from just setting up policy through the majority of commerce.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I don't have outside links, if "Social Security" in the US were to go in a more corporate direction, I wouldn't be surprised if this is how they would do it (as oppose to the scaremongering "privatize Social Security" stuff).

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yeah, a lot of the economies that were supposedly built up by "the free market" have a lot of state and outside interference in their economies. See south Korea for a perfect example of that.

[BobKKKindle$]

The following essay, which you may already have read, deals at length with the issue of whether countries which are often described as examples of how capitalism can be effective were really "capitalist" as many of them developed through extensive government intervention and market regulation:

http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Excellent article.