Wow.

I am speechless.

As someone who was born and raised in Turkey, and visited Singapore for long periods of time, let me say very clearly: you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Turkey and Singapore are two completely different worlds, with different histories, cultures, and geopolitical situations, and are not related in any shape or form. There may be a few surface-level parallels, but that's where the similarities end.

I am stunned however that a person who very likely has never even visited either place (much less lived in them) has the gall to call what Turkey is going through "Singaporification." I mean, it's not like I haven't noticed the anti-Singaporean sentiments on HN lately - they don't surprise me, since a lot of HN folks are white middle/upper-middle class and lean libertarian[1], which is the exact opposite of Singapore. But using the events in Istanbul as an opportunity to bash Singapore is just... petty and shameless.

I would love to give you a detailed breakdown of the differences between Singapore and Turkey, but that would be an essay. I'll highlight a few important ones.

Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries in the world. Turkey on the other hand is rampant with corruption, especially the current government. That's part of the reason why the protests started: the contractor that was going to build the mall on top of Gezi Park has ties to the Prime Minister, who was going to profit from it. That's just ONE example.

Singapore is extremely diverse culturally. There are several religions and languages. As a result, there are often no culturally accepted behaviors. In a sense, Singapore does not really fit the traditional definition of a nation, and instead has been called a society in transition. In contrast, Turkey has a very strong cultural identity rooted deeply in the country's history and predominant religion, Islam.

The two country's governments are also extremely different. Singapore is a de-facto one-party state; the dominant party, the PAP, has won every single general election since the first one. In contrast, Turkey is a multi-party system, which creates very complex dynamics in the political landscape.

I can go on, but you get the idea. Hopefully.

[1]Table 10 in http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa580.pdf

OP deserves a lot of credit for having the courage to write this.

1. Software was supposed to be trans-industrial. If you knew how to write code, you could work anywhere in the industrial economy. This meant it would have all the same benefits (stability, industry-agnosticism) of management without the negatives (subjectivity, politics). Unfortunately, that didn't last. Managers took that from us and created a culture of oblique/inappropriate specialization because it's easier to do that than to admit that they don't understand what we do.

2. Our industry has become extremely anti-intellectual. There's a sharp phase change between what your professors groom you for (out of a legacy leftist hope, never realized, that if a leadership education is delivered down into society's middle; then the scorned middle classes will revolt against the elite) and the world of Work, which hasn't evolved in most places. Adam Smith called Britain "a nation of shopkeepers". Corporate America is a nation of social climbers. It's fucking revolting. The good news is that, after a few years, you get used to it and develop the social skills necessary to survive it.

3. I don't think the future is in the Bay Area or Manhattan. Those are great places to build your career and gain some credibility/savings/experience while society figures out where the future will be. However, if you want to build the future, California's not the place for that anymore. Forty years ago, Northern CA was where people went to escape the Mad Men nonsense. Now, houses in Palo Alto-- a suburb; we're not talking San Francisco-- are more expensive than many places in Manhattan. The future's going to come out of a location that's free from the high-rent nonsense that creates a work culture of subordination. The years that made Silicon Valley cheap were those in which few feared the boss because one could make living money doing odd jobs, the cost of living being so low. That's over now. The Valley is Manhattan (again, Mad Men) minus winter and with worse architecture.

4. Through all this, you gotta play the long game. Sure, you're not going to be able to do hard experimental mathematics. You may have to let that dream go. Just keep current/sharp enough to be eligible for interesting work when it comes up. That is doable. Things are terrible right now for cognitive 1-percenters who want meaningful, interesting work (i.e. an upper middle class salary isn't enough, and it's never "stable" for top-0.x-percent intellects because of the job security risks that level of talent implies) but they won't always be like this.

5. Relatedly, if you watch the social climbers, they don't do a lot of real work. If you get even passably good at their game, you can get by with a couple hours of focused effort and that leaves 5-6 for self-directed learning. (Don't write code that you'll use later on work time-- you don't own that-- but feel free to explore and just rewrite the code from scratch at home.) Don't feel wrong about doing this; it's a crooked game and that makes criminals of everyone. Work is (for 95+ percent of people) just about advancing your career; the other shit is stuff people say to distract the naive and clueless. That idealistic shit is a luxury of the extremely privileged, and you need to pretend it as a status signal, but don't believe your own lie. Proles have to take what they can. Just be smart about it. Stealing office supplies == stupid. It's illegal and wrong and dumb and you'll get fired. Making decisions that help your career but aren't optimal for others (who don't give a shit about you either) == smart, if you don't get caught. If you steal, make sure to take intangibles.

6. If you can, start getting up at 5:00 in the morning. Get some productive hours banged out before you go to work. If you can't go to bed early, then compensate by taking mid-afternoon naps in a place where your co-workers won't find you (almost no one gets anything done during those hours anyway). Relatedly, it's worth a lot of money to kill your commute. If you can't afford to live near work, then consider a different city.

7. There are jobs that aren't like the corporate hell being describe above. They exist, but they're not common, and they're probably extremely selective in the Bay Area. When you get one, hold on to it for as long as it's good and learn as much as you can.

Also, on this: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/we-should-pay...

"These people are my friends. They are my students, my relatives. They have no «hidden agenda» as the state likes to say. Their agenda is out there. It is very clear. The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government, for the construction of malls, luxury condominiums, freeways, dams and nuclear plants. The government is looking for (and creating when necessary) any excuse to attack Syria against its people’s will.

On top of all that, the government control over its people’s personal lives has become unbearable as of late. The state, under its conservative agenda passed many laws and regulations concerning abortion, cesarean birth, sale and use of alcohol and even the color of lipstick worn by the airline stewardesses."

It sounds as if the protestors, if the author is genuine, are protesting something I call "Singaporification." It's the fusion of authoritarian quasi-fascist rule with capitalism-- a kind of socially conservative, often (but not always) religious conservative, but economically neo-liberal state of affairs. On the surface it sometimes looks theocratic, but in reality it's more of a dictatorship of gentrification. Religious morality (or sometimes secularized versions thereof) is used as a facade to condemn any form of social deviancy and especially to mentally control the lower classes by manipulating their religious faiths.

(We see the latter in America with the "culture war," which is a way of distracting the largely-religious working classes while their future is sold out from under them.)

In conversations with fellow techies, it's disturbed me to what extent many seem to tacitly support this kind of thing. I've been in many conversations explicitly praising Singapore -- a country that permits death sentences for minor infractions -- as a viable model of the future.

The thing that makes Singaporification scary is that it works. The scariest dystopias are not hideous hellscapes where nobody would want to live, as those tend to self-destruct or at best persist in tiny enclaves and never catch on. Who would want to emulate North Korea? But seductive dystopias are dangerous because they can catch on. Who wouldn't want low crime, clean streets, and a wonderfully healthy economy? In that sense I find Singapore to be the scariest dystopia in the world today.

Historical precursors include Franco's Spain. Think of Singaporification as a gentler, less overtly violent form of Spanish fascism. But as we see if you openly challenge it, the gloves rapidly come off and your shiny clean utopia busts out the tanks, tear gas, and death penalty sentences.

Edit: on second thought, it also represents a fusion of liberal nanny-statism, conservative social authoritarianism, and neo-liberal economics. Government by and for the uptight, culturally xenophobic urban professional.

As Benjamin Franklin said: those who sacrifice liberty for security and prosperity deserve neither.

Worth watching: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066434/

"Buy, and be happy."

If action flicks are more your thing, this is a fun and a bit underrated riff on the same theme: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/

This is a big part of the reason I support the idea of a "basic income" system.

I believe there are lots of people out there not wired for dealing with the politics or immediate-results stress of the VC system but who are self-directed, interested and motivated enough to work on big problems, but whose energy is destroyed by having to deal with the immense bullshit inherent in modern office-style software development to make money to pay the bills. As a society I believe we would be better off if these people were free to go live in some cheap cost of living area while just doing their thing and contributing to the commons in the form of open source or taking what they eventually create and marketing it (if it is marketable when complete) in order to generate wealth on top of their basic income.

I believe the same would hold for non-software creative jobs as well.

But, of course, I'm not holding my breath for this to happen.