Lee Kuan Yew on Talent, Andrew Wilkinson, Red State Migration and Housing Transparency
Been a minute since I published Smart Young BC, I appreciate everyone who’s taken the time to read, provide feedback, and share the piece. Always happy to hear from you if you’re reading this.
Here are a few ideas connected to Smart Young BC that I’ve recently come across.
Lee Kuan Yew on Talent
The thesis of Smart Young BC is that BC must attract and retain smart young people. This talent shapes the province for the long run, and we have a massive opportunity to secure our future by pursuing actions that help us do this now.
Lee Kuan Yew, the “founder” and first Prime Minister of Singapore put similar importance on talent, and Singapore is a world-class country because of that. I learned more about his thoughts on talent by recently reading “From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000” (recommend reading the first 200 pages, and skipping the next 500). He took a comprehensive, long-term view of talent, doing things like:
Making sure highly educated, smart women had more kids. Providing subsidies and incentives to do so. For example, providing better school choices to those who did.
Investing heavily in higher education, both in Singapore and beyond. For example, the Singapore Armed Forces created a program for the very best people to go to the UK to study, get scholarships, receive pay as a lieutenant in the Armed Forces, serve for 8 years, and during that time receive 2-3 years of training in the US including from top schools like Harvard. 10 of these “scholarship” programs were provided to top talent every year. By 1995, four SAF scholars had become cabinet ministers.
Got top people in government. From a report on “Lee Kuan Yew’s Thoughts on Talent and Singapore’s Development Strategy”
Lee Kuan Yew once pointed out that the whole society depended on about 300 people (top civil servants and political elites) who bore the burden of carrying out government policies.
Pay for government officials is competitive with the private sector. There was a pay cut, but not as much as other governments worldwide. Also, being elected with less funding was possible in Singapore (as compared to other areas, which incentivized corruption in office).
Where Singapore is now largely due to the importance they placed on talent. They took a long-term view of talent, making sure future generations were set up for success in the past. They created structures to incentivize people to make Singapore a better place, and it worked. BC has a chance to do something similar right now to attain a similar future.
Andrew Wilkinson on The Knowledge Project
Andrew Wilkinson’s appearance on The Knowledge Project reflects what we need more leaders in BC to be doing: talking about their connection to where they live. As mentioned in Smart Young BC:
Leaders of top organizations here should lead by example as well. Those leaders aren't just business people, but examples of British Columbians. Someone like Andrew Wilkinson has done massive amounts for the reputation of Victoria by being active in the community, online in tech and investing circles (with his company Tiny), and an outspoken supporter of living there.
He did just that, talking in depth about his career, his businesses and Victoria. He is someone who cares a lot about Victoria and BC and continues to invest in both whether by owning and launching businesses or by supporting the community.
For example, Capital Daily was founded by him and is now read by a significant number of people in Victoria. His company Overstory Media Group continues to grow and provide important journalism in BC.
The Knowledge Project reaches thousands of smart people across the globe, and to get such a glowing endorsement is massive for the city.
Red State Migration and Housing Transparency
There is a meme in the US that the ideal place to live is a “blue city in a red state.” All the “culture” and “quality of life” of a city with talented, supported, well-off people with lower state taxes. The trends reflect this preference. Many “blue city, red state” cities like Austin and Miami saw a big influx of new arrivals.
From “The numbers are in: red states are winning”
An incredible 46 million people moved to a new ZIP code over the year to February 2022, the highest annual total since Equifax, a credit agency, began tracking moves in 2010. Republican-leaning red states gained the most residents — led by Florida, Texas, and North Carolina — while the blue states of California, New York, and Illinois were the biggest migratory losers. The most popular pandemic-era moves were from New York to Florida and California to Texas — so much so that U-Haul ran out of moving trucks leaving California last year.
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When people have the choice (as they do with remote work), their revealed preference is for “cheaper housing, better weather, less traffic, and lower taxes.” Unless BC changes, it will likely lose out in the long run to places offering these.
Blue states might be suffering from success. After raking in tax dollars with the rapid growth of valuable industries like tech and finance, these industries are becoming increasingly dissociated with geography. As mentioned in the article, the failures of Blue States were hidden by these successes, and the results of poor governance are starting to show. “Bad policies barely mattered when you could pay to ignore them.” Now people can leave, and they are.
As an example of how red states are dealing with the influx, look at how Florida is incentivizing housing by making it more transparent. From “Florida started penalizing bureaucratic delay. Housing permits spiked”
Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill that fundamentally changes the state’s permitting process for home building. It requires local jurisdictions to post online not only their permitting processes but also the status of permit applications. The transparency takes a good amount of mystery out of what can be an inscrutable branch of bureaucracy.
As a relatively informed person, who hopes to see many more homes be built across BC, I assume we are doing a bad job at getting it done, but I have no idea how bad. I assume the blockers are in city governments throughout the province, and laws created by those governments, but I can’t be sure. Increased transparency would help me, and many other people see how bad the problem is, and help make it better.
Increased transparency puts more pressure on city governments to align their actions with the will of the people. When loss of revenue is on the line, it incentivizes them to move faster to fix the “housing crisis.” Florida is doing just that.
If the government offices fail to respond in that time frame, the locality must refund 10 percent of the application fee for every additional business day of silence.
This same idea could apply to immigration or other key government services, refunding the application fee if processing time was beyond an expected and reasonable amount of time. As mentioned in Smart Young BC, “Canada prides itself as a nation of immigrants, built by immigrants, we should be the best at immigration.”