Everyone loves to point at Singapore. Margaret Thatcher wanted Britain to become one. China sent over twenty thousand officials to study it. After Brexit, British politicians literally said “let Singapore be our model.” But what is Singapore, really? And why does every free-market thinker keep going back to this tiny city-state the size of Greater London?
Imagine showing up to a new job and the Berlin Wall falls. That’s basically what happened to Chan Heng Chee.
Chapter 3 is called “The Top and the Bottom” and Rand really means that literally. It starts at the top of a skyscraper and ends in an underground cafeteria. But the real meaning is about who’s at the top of society and who’s at the bottom, and how those positions are getting inverted.
This chapter opens with something every small business owner knows too well. You’re checking your bank account, doing math in your head, and wondering if a payment will come in before payroll goes out.
Chapter 1 showed how Hong Kong became a model for free market thinkers around the world. Chapter 2 asks a different question: what happens when you try to copy that model? Slobodian takes us to London, where Thatcher’s government tried to build mini Hong Kongs inside British cities. The result was not a free market paradise. It was a city broken into pieces.
You think the UN Security Council is a place where 15 countries sit together and make decisions about world peace? Think again.
If Chapter 1 was about a world falling apart, Chapter 2 is about the kind of person who holds it together. We meet Hank Rearden, and honestly, Rand does a beautiful job introducing him.
Imagine you spent eight years building something. You put in the long nights, dealt with difficult clients, hired people, lost people. And then someone you respect tells you straight to your face: your business is worth nothing.
Chapter 1 of Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian (ISBN: 9781250753908) opens with a wild scene. Peter Thiel is onstage with a young Google engineer named Patri Friedman. And they are talking about building nations on the ocean.
You know what nobody tells you about the United Nations? For the longest time, diplomats had to fight over chairs. Literally.