The New Economy is thriving in Singapore

By Anjula Razdan
Published on March 1, 2001

All Good No Bad, Thomas Frank,
Context
The New Economy is thriving in Singapore, writes Baffler
editor Thomas Frank in the literary and cultural journal
Context. Why? Because politics are absent, and
intellectual life and freedom of the press have been obliterated.
So what happens when a country worships at the altar of the
marketplace? Frank went to Singapore to find out and discovered a
country devoted to corporate culture. ‘In the bookstores,’ he
writes, ‘I could find no copies of the Baffler, but a
collection of management theory so vast that they dwarf any I have
ever seen in America.’ He also witnessed ‘Microsoft Day’ at the
local mall, fathers and sons eagerly lining up to bask in the gaze
of Bill Gates’ Southeast Asia emissaries. Hungry? Frank found a
mass of American-style rib restaurants. ‘The line outside…Kenny
Roger’s restaurant was so long,’ he states, ‘that I had to get my
ribs from Tony Roma’s instead. (I could also have chosen a rib
place called ‘Fat Daddy.’)’ Frank did not find Singapore strange.
Just the opposite, he found it familiar. ‘Depoliticized but
intensely successorized, Singapore is what America will be like if
the ‘New Economy’ crowd get their way for much longer,’ he
warns.
–Anjula Razdan
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