More about the United States and some about Singapore - Response to Janamitra Devan's article in this issue of Business Horizons

Business Horizons, March-April, 1990 by Harvey C. Bunke

More about the United States and Some about Singapore

Writing, though often painful, can be its own reward. The sheer act of arranging words, organizing thoughts, creating verbal images, and then capturing them on paper can be satisfying, even exciting. Often I find there is an additional dividend: complimentary letters and phone calls from readers who generously say that they found the writing well done, or that they now see the world somewhat differently, or who ask for more information. Then there are, of course, other responses, less favorable, that politely point out the error of my ways - and still others that are negative, even occasionally hostile.

In the past I have tried, not always successfully, to answer these with a personal letter. But the Editor's Chair "Lessons from Singapore" in the May-June issue of Business Horizons, which was rather widely reprinted, brought such a volume of mail that it seems appropriate to respond in print to both those who were complimentary - and there were many - and to those who were distressed - of whom there were more. Representative of those who found my view incomplete, distorted, or simply wrongheaded is the article in this issue, beginning on page 3, written by a native Singaporean, Janamitra Devan, who currently is teaching at Middlebury College in Vermont. I will respond to the main thrust of his criticism, therefore it would be profitable to read his comments before proceeding further.

To begin, let me point out that my article was entitled, "Lessons from Singapore." And to whom were the lessons addressed? To Americans, certainly not Singaporeans. For an American who spent a very busy but brief four months in Asia to lecture Singaporeans on the merits of their society would indeed be presumptuous.

And what was the primary lesson that I hoped to pass on to my reader? That we should give serious thought to the always uneasy balance between individual rights and the collective good. I think it is generally agreed that the United States, while enjoying unprecedented prosperity, is in a number of respects going through a rather bad patch. In the economic sphere we are falling behind in saving, productivity, investment, trade, and research and development. Our educational system is in a state of embarrassing disrepair. We aren't maintaining our highways, bridges, or water systems. Our environment is suffering. Our cities are tormented by crime and drug wars and haunted by an ever-expanding number of uncounted and uncountable homeless. Moreover, our position of world leadership is in jeopardy.

To all my readers I strongly recommend "The Japan That Can Say `No,'" by Akio Morita and Shintaro Ishihara (1989), with its condescending tone, almost as if the United States were a Third World country. We should all be uncomfortable with Morita's observation that "Americans make money by playing money games," "appear to have forgotten the importance of production," and that "America looks ten minutes ahead; Japan looks ten years." Picking up on this theme, Ishihara boasts that the Americans are at the point where, "if [Japan] stopped selling them chips, there would be nothing more they could do. If, for example, Japan sold chips to the Soviet Union and stopped selling them to the U.S., that would upset the entire military balance."

To finance our consumer society and our increasing debt we are engaged in a national fire sale for the omnipotent yen. Mitsubishi had the temerity to buy, with money that we gave for consumer goods, our sacred economic temple, Rockefeller Center. The Sears Tower, the tallest building in the world, might well have gone to the Japanese except for fear of negative public reaction. And today in Hawaii, the Japanese have accomplished with economics many of the things they could not achieve by force in 1941. One can only wonder if U.S. independence has been so compromised that it would be necessary to get Japanese permission and support of the dollar before we could engage in a conflict on the scale of those in Korea or Vietnam. As Senator Moynihan so crisply put it, "It is an iron law of history that power passes from debtor to creditor."

During my stay in Asia, I was struck not only by Singapore's remarkable economic achievements, but also by the absence of some of the seemingly intractable social problems that plague the United States. The question I posed to myself was: "Why has Singapore in the last 25 years been able to accomplish spectacular economic growth and an unmatched, rapidly rising standard of living while concurrently enjoying stable social conditions, yet during the same period the U.S. has been transformed from the world's greatest creditor nation to the greatest debtor nation, even as it has suffered a range of social pathologies on a scale threatening the very fabric of American society?"

The answer to my question was to be found in one word: "culture." In "Lessons from Singapore" I spoke of the Eastern ethic, more specifically the "Confucian ethic," which I likened to the Protestant ethic in the West. Indeed, I carefully pointed out that the Confucian ethic and the Protestant ethic both sanctified three uncompromising virtues: hard work, frugality, and personal responsibility. In addition, it seems to me that the Confucian ethic, even more than the Protestant ethic, teaches that knowledge is sacred and that it is through learning that man achieves the noble life.