It's kinda funny that a lot of Americans think Taiwan is some ideal vision of what East Asia could be. Most of my family is in Taiwan. It's very nice, wealthy, advanced, politically free, etc.. It is hard to see what is wrong with Taiwan from the surface.

The problem is not so dissimilar to America. Young people cannot get good paying jobs, but housing gets more and more expensive, especially in the core economic areas of Taipei. Wealth is being concentrated into the hands of a few oligarchic families -- it is a billionaire haven.

From the outside, it looks pretty good. But if you live there, it's harder to see any way to change your circumstances. You just are who you are. Better chances outside of Taiwan, and most of my cousins have either left or spend a lot of time working abroad.

So the problem with Taiwan is kind of like Japan -- the basic reality of it is pretty nice, but it's frozen in place. There is no mobility, just a constant inward pressure to make do with less. In order to break up this economic monotony, Taiwan engages in never-ending elections.

The elections and democratic process are insanely combative, and eat up so much social bandwidth it's almost worse than in America. You would think something huge is actually at stake, but the reality is there is not a meaningful difference. Taiwan is stuck in the mud.

But because Taiwan has an electoral system and produces a recognizable progressive activism, we in the West think of Taiwan as a kind of ideal East Asian state. In a way it is, because life there is just as stuck as it is here. And the palliative is a never-ending election cycle.