It took three generations to create a society of government dependent/ trend following people. It will take another few generations of time for people to realise how cool machineries can be in increasing productivity and amass wealth.
As the title suggests, factories, machineries, capitals of production however you name it belonged to the people, regardless of their size and scope. Just look at how many of our parents and grandparents had their own businesses. Then policies formulated over the last 40 years of “nation building” systematically divested and robbed the people of them. Most have been transferred to foreign MNCs in the name of efficiency and job creation. For whom? I wonder. This is what happened to our fashion industry. See my post “Why Singapore is the culturally driest among the four Asia Pacific Tigers“.
And the people are now expected to increase productivity for wage raise. Any engineer can tell you machineries allow you to do more for less, ie increase productivity. As mentioned above, perhaps when trends are reversed in another 50 years?
Keching 