Challenge: A Successful Philippine Republic
- Thread starter CMBA
- Start date
Magsaysay lives, Macapagal beats Marcos in 1961 or 1965. Marcos could've been a Lee Kuan Yew if he so chose, but chose to thoroughly pillage the country.
[FONT="]But I think the best scenario for the Philippines is for the Ma-I thalassocracy to pull a Silla or a Nobunaga.[/FONT]
Flocculencio
Donor
Singapore's a bad case study to use because it was small enough to micromanage. Lee Kuan Yew was able to issue guidelines on things as minor as the recommended temperature for government offices (one of his beliefs is that civilisations in temperate climates had an advantage because in the tropics it was often too hot to keep up a good rate of work during the day- in keeping with this in the 70s he made airconditioning government offices a priority wherever funds permitted so as to increase efficiency). Essentially Lee had the advantage of being able to play SimCity, something which most countries are too big to do with.
Bill Cameron
Banned
Flocc,
Thank you for that.
Your post should be saved and immediately re-posted in threads of this type.
Bill
I have to agree with Flock, on this, as Singapore is a whole lot smaller than the Philippines and certainly already was quite wealthy, during the British period. The much more populated Philippines would have the same problems as all developping countries with a vastly growing poor population, namely the destruction of income by the growing number of mouths to feed. (No real choice here, as not feeding the people would lead to an even bigger drop in economical growth.)
The only real option would be to reduce populationgrowth by education of the people, with the also positve sideeffect hte educated population could become more productive as well, although still mainly in agrculture, given the Archipello's lack of natural resources.
The only real option would be to reduce populationgrowth by education of the people, with the also positve sideeffect hte educated population could become more productive as well, although still mainly in agrculture, given the Archipello's lack of natural resources.
No World War II would help. It gets its independence in 1946 as planned but isn't destroyed due to fighting.
Faeelin
Banned
I'm not sure this will solve anything. After all, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea have done just fine.
Evil Tristin
Banned
A Philippinophile ASB zaps Marcos out of existence long before he's president.
In the 1950s the Philippines was actually a promising economic competitor. With Japan still rebuilding, and the rest of SE Asia in colonial hands, the Philippines actually had a healthy economy and had the higest standard of living in the region aside from Australia. Everything went to sh*t when Marcos came along and plundered the country. So take him out of the equation and put a consecutive line of competent presidents in office the country just may be a viable world economic competitor.
Flocculencio
Donor
Having said that it must be noted that Singapore's move to first World status wasn't wholly built on the back of it's status as the most important port in Asia. This provided a base source of funds for the state but more important was the re-investment of this revenue into the developing of a manufacturing economy in the 70s. The revenue generated by this was then reinvested into redeveloping Singapore's status as a financial centre in the 80s and early 90s and then developing the service and R&D sector in the late 90s and early 00s.
More importantly with regard to the development of other Asian economies Singapore had a whole sequence of development stages available to it because it wasn't dependent on primary production as with places like the Philippines and Indonesia. Building all the above on a city which is already a major trading port (and which is micromanageable) is easier than starting development from scratch in a largely agricultural economy.
Having said that, keeping kleptocrats like Marcos out of office would have gone a long way towards helping Filipino development.