What are good comebacks whenever neoliberals bring up Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea as examples of their "success"?

What are good comebacks whenever neoliberals bring up Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea as examples of their "success"?

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theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed-life-inside-hong-kong-coffin-cubicles-cage-homes-in-pictures
npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/10/398498496/a-forgotten-generation-half-of-s-koreas-elderly-live-in-poverty
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Those are authoritarian shitholes that also have reactionary social policies. The goal of debating neoliberals is to show how illiberal they actually are so that left liberals don't fall for their propaganda.

Ignoring the whole oppressive dictatorship thing, all three of those countries relied on massive amounts of state intervention and protectionism to grow their economies, as well as extremely favorable trade relationships with the USA.

South Korea was given gigantic subsidies and military support from the United States. Similarly Hong Kong has the backing of China and the UK. South Korea also invested heavily in it's own industries, ignoring the idea that they should immediately open up their markets without first developing their own internal economy. Pic related goes into a lot of detail about How South Korea and Japan's economic miracle periods were periods of heavy government regulation, spending and subsidies.

Singapore sucks the US's dick and sells all it's resources to them at a discount price that they usually steal from other micro-nations around it or internally from their own people. It's a hotbed for world wide terrorism and is remarkably backward socially. Hardly a dream state.

Taiwan is similar to South Korea, they get a bunch of US support, but unlike Korea their standard of living is not that great and their still partly a sweatshop economy.

Neoliberals are not against state intervention. They aren't like libertarians or ancaps. The only way to "defeat" them in a debate is to show how awful their societies are.

neoliberals suck the invisible dick of the free market almost as hard as libertarians.

By principle they're supposed to be, that is why it is almost unthinkable for them to offer any policies that would expand budgets in western countries even in the face of austerity failing at every level imaginable.

This. Also, the lower-class populations of those countries are truly mindless drones living largely meaningless lives. You have to get theoretical as well. If the economy is great, but the only joy in life is consumption, what's the point?

It's easy to be successful when you have an army of slaves in the "developing" world!

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Taiwan was under martial law for almost 40 years

How is Singapore a hub for terrorism?

People living in cages

South Korea has literal third world slums clustered around all its major cities. I have no idea why people see it as a success story.

I believe it was the country a year before 9/11 that held an international solidarity conference for a ton of extremist Islamic groups including al qaeda. Although it also could have been Indonesia.

Singapore thinks of Indonesia as its "big brother" despite the fact that the country is a fucking hellhole and far poorer then Singapore. But, all the Indonesian kleptocrats, mafioso, capitalists, and feudal lords needed someplace to put their money…

Putting aside the fact that these countries were built on heavy GOVERNMENT intervention in the economy, they prove that capitalism and democracy are not necessarily related at all. South Korea is ran by monarchist business conglomerates and is probably the strongest modern fascist state. Liberals have been indoctrinated with the myth of social progress, so pointing out that these Asian tigers are proto NRx state should cause some spectacular meltdowns.

That said, the gulf between NRx and your average Democrat is smaller than you think., more of a function of state propaganda than theoretical coherence, so be careful.

theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jun/07/boxed-life-inside-hong-kong-coffin-cubicles-cage-homes-in-pictures

no, I'm not a filthy communist
thanks for bringing this up, I was just casually lurking through all the boards and was of the impression Korea was somewhat on par with some low level western countries, now I have to look deeper into it

porky was shaking as he asked his questions and then just stood there and got humiliated
wish noam could live forever

All of those countries have closed borders, and can therefore no longer be called "neoliberal" anymore. Neolibs BTFO.

npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/04/10/398498496/a-forgotten-generation-half-of-s-koreas-elderly-live-in-poverty

Wait really

Shiny buildings do not justify human rights violations

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That none of them are neoliberal? I mean Singapore is pure keynesianism, South Korea was ordoliberalism and Taiwan was the same. None of them were a part of the neoliberal consensus, they are based on demand-based economics, not free market neoclassicism or monetarism.

Neoliberalism and right-"libertarianism" are basically the same ideology anyway

While it's easy to refute it from a lolbertarian/ancap perspective given how they relied heavily on protectionism (and currency exchange rates inflation which will have it's repercussions in the future like it had in 1929) that is enough to smash their Austrian economics illiteracy, neoliberals however don't mind those things, and even if you point out that these countries are doing well because the U.S has interests at keeping them doing well (helped SK to fortify the bad communism image NK holds, much like Chile & the rest of Latin America), most neolibs are U.S imperialism apologists, so I say either step away from arguing macroeconomics into moral faggotry such as exploitation, sweatshops, or point out some oppression bait to trigger their idpol.

Capitalism is a necessary stage in human development. These countries achieved capitalism, and now their populations are alienated.

Yes, all of them were police states (Singapore is likely still) until the last 30 years. Taiwan though fits neoliberalism well-it's in an economic decline and is about to be the first Asian nation to legalize gay marriage.

that's a good book and was one of the first anti-capitalist/anti-growth things I read that really opened my mind.


Oh, on the contrary. Their belief in a bare-bones welfare state is probably the only thing separating them from libertarians, economically


Neoliberalism isn't just about immigration, it's about unrestricted capital, i.e. globalization, and those countries are usually propped up as the wunderkinds of globalization and neoliberal policies.

Didn't everybody except MTWs already figure this out?