From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Sun Nov 30 1997 - 14:45:48 MST
A couple of notes on my own earlier post regarding the "Asian Tigers". Local
elections in Taiwan have just yielded the result of fairly massive rejection
of the Kuomintang party and, as a friend of mine has correctly pointed out
off-list, Korea is currently undergoing what appear to be fairly "real"
anticorruption trials pointed at members of the existing power structure.
With these points in mind, I should have said that the fact that it has taken
so long bears out my thesis. I don't think that the idea of "Confucian
Capitalism" is some sort of cultural monolith. I just worry about capitalism
without concommitant values of individual liberty and responsibility. All
I'm really saying is that capitalism with too great a stress on
authoritarianism and orthodoxy seems like a weird and possibly bad mutation.
The outcome of the public corruption trials underway now in Korea will be
very important for Korea's and Asia's future. Assuming their polity comes
out the other side of the current crises as an intact democracy, that might
be just the rite of passage they need.
With it's concentration of wealth and talent, Singapore is definitely a place
to watch. A question I'll be asking over the next decade is the extent to
which Singapore remains "Chinese" culturaly. The very explictly Confucian
regime of Lee Kuan Yew might give way to a much more culturally diverse
environment there that could become a laboratory of 21st century
technological society.
Greg Burch <Gburch1@aol.com>----<burchg@liddellsapp.com>
Attorney ::: Director, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://users.aol.com/gburch1 -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must
be driven into practice with courageous impatience."
-- Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
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