What would you even call their socioeconomic system? They're not exactly doing neoliberal capitalism, their government is far too involved for that. They're not socialist, they've got free enterprise galore. The autocracy+militarization+heavily meddled with big business thing most resembles fascist states, but without the typical racist scapegoating (on the contrary, they've put a frankly inordinate amount of effort into preventing racial infighting).
In most countries "The country also passed a new law earlier this year that would allow the police to control the bank accounts of individuals who they suspect to be scam targets and limit what transactions they can do." would probably set off alarm bells, but it does seem like business as usual in Singapore.
This is crazy to me. How far are we willing to go in terms of restricting freedoms for safety?
If you don't live in Singapore: it's not your problem.
china could do the same btw. china also, as far as i heard, does allow dissent within the party.
Except that this already happened[0], and not in "authoritarian" Singapore but in "liberal" Canada.
The cops adding checks and balances to delay you from wiring $50,000k overseas is a great government looking out for the vulnerable.
Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty — America probably the most so, but even EU countries are extremely liberal in a liberty sense compared to historical norms, and even compared to some well-functioning economies today like China and Singapore. It's interesting, since I think the idea of personal liberty is so deeply engrained in many of our consciousnesses that we couldn't conceive of living like that. But... plenty of people do, and they're happy about it.
that's not true. you just have to document and explain the transfer, if it is a foreign bank account. if it is a local one then the citizenship of the account holder does not even matter.
Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty
in everyday life the limits on personal liberty in china are hardly noticeable. and they are contrasted with safety even when walking through dark neighborhoods at 3am in the morning.
The everyday life aspects aren't noticeable because everyone has adapted to not having the liberty to e.g. rally to protest the government, shut down major infrastructure in opposition to the government, do drugs in public and buy them off the Dark Web, etc. There's quite a famous rally in the late 80s where the "shut down major city sites" difference was proven... starkly. Contrast that to last year in America, where it was quite common for protests to shut down entire highways, and not even a single tank rolled over them.
I'm not arguing that America's system is necessarily better. But it's definitely different, and Americans find the restrictions of Chinese and Singaporean-style governance baffling, as per many comments in this thread.
I personally have used the "liberty to walk home alone at night" point in discussions to point out the benefits of China's system with friends and family too, so I'm not unsympathetic to the idea. It's just a different way of thinking than many Americans have, where the ability to oppose the government and do whatever you want with your money is considered sacrosanct, and giving up personal security is culturally viewed as so clearly worth it that alternatives aren't even considered.
Ah yes, nothing screams valuing personal freedom like having 2 million people *in prison* right now in US. A rate of what, one every 140 adults?
And nothing screams personal freedom like spying every single of it's citizens or hacking every single chip on this planet.
Hell, US respects your freedom so much, you can't even renounce their citizenship!!
FWIW, you're nearly doubling the actual prison incarceration rate. There were about 1.25 million people in prison as of the most recent federal data (which covers up until 2023). 2MM is the number of people who were ever in a prison or jail in 2023 (including e.g. holding cells for drunk drivers), but there wasn't a point in which 2MM were in prison at a single point in time.
Nonetheless, America has >10x the number of murders per capita than China, so it's no surprise that it has nearly 10x the people in prison for murder per capita than China (in fact, it's surprising it's not >10x, to match the murder rate). Ditto for basically any crime rate you can think of.
The downside of America's system includes much higher crime rates, which ends up in higher incarceration rates. That doesn't discount that in America, much more is legal than in China: people in America commit a lot more crime, but also do a lot more things that are legal in America but illegal in China (e.g. mass rallies to protest the government). In the security/liberty tradeoff, America and China are pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum. There are downsides to both, and upsides; China is a much safer place than America.
They are famous for having a lot of rules, but the instances where they really go wild are when someone has been particularly egregious.
For the most part it is just insanely materialistic as the main downside.
Most of the "harsh" rules make a tremendous amount of sense when you actually go there. Yeah, gum and spitting are illegal, and that is a good thing in a city as crowded as that with a significant population from countries where spitting is customary. Take an overnight train in China, and you will come to discover that you too appreciate a place where people can't just hork one up at will.
To put it into perspective, SG is one of the rare tier 1 cities where you can get a Michelin meal from a street vendor (literally), after engaging the services of a prostitute, and drinking a beer in public. It isn't nearly as uptight as an HOA.
This trope, long exhausted and repeatedly regurgitated, persists despite the reality having shifted considerably.
In truth, chewing gum has been legally obtainable in Singapore for a long time and is available for purchase through local pharmacies.
Asian Switzerland.
And if that offends anyone it ought to be the Swiss (and any fanboys they may have who take offense on their behalf).
It's just State Capitalism, isn't it? Like China. A market-based economy with free enterprise, but no illusions of egalitarianism or democracy, enables the state to step in and manage and direct the market with effective regulation. In a democracy the state can manage this for a time, but eventually a private entity or group of entities leverages their power to influence law and co-opt democratic power, so the market starts steering its own regulation and you end up with fascism as a means of population control or a Russia-style cleptocratic oligarchy. We have not yet figured out how to sustain democracy + capitalism, if it's even possible.
I worry that most will see the rise of countries like Singapore and China and the relative decline of the US/EU and conclude that democracy is a failed project all together.
For example, Auckland, our major economic hub, doesn't even have proper public transportation, and now citizens are battling with issues commuting to and from work.
I think part of Singapore's success has been it's ability to make bold decisions and see it through without worrying about short term election cycles.
You can come up with a government that does less well at giving people what they want (surprisingly easy to do) but the obvious downside of that is people will be getting less of what they want. For example I have little doubt New Zealanders would be incensed if government spending dropped to Singaporian levels.
You may say, well, democracy brings in the next government, and they're carrying out the policies that they campaigned for. But my point isn't that democracy is failing, it's the mechanisms. The 4 year term means even governments that do think a massive public transport overhaul is needed won't do it because cutting costs elsewhere to fund it will lead to losing the next term.
So I do partially agree with you in that it is ultimately a people problem. But short election cycles shape how those people's preferences are expressed and acted upon.
Good? The point of democracy is for the government to do things that there is a consensus that it ought. No consensus, no action. If people would not vote for the policy then they government shouldn't do it.
You're describing a situation where most New Zealanders seem to be happy with the status quo. If they're going to vote out a government that spends money on public transport then the right thing for the government to do is not start tilting at expensive windmills. The issue with a place as small as New Zealand is that democracy just does a pretty good job of implementing the policies that most people want. The smaller the polity, the more the failures of the polity are just a reflection of its own desires. Election cycle length doesn't change that, it takes ideological change and persuasion.
China economically functions similarly to Singapore, with long documented connections and explicit emulation. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping already began this and hundreds of thousands of Chinese officials and leaders were trained there and in industrial parks with the explicit goal of knowledge sharing with the dream of "planting 1000 Singapores". [0, 1, 2, 3]
> fascist states, but without the typical racist scapegoating
Tangential, but Hitler added racism; Mussolini, Salazar, Franco/de Rivera (who used large Arab and Berber forces fighting the Republicans in Spain) etc. had none of that (until Hitler forced Mussolini's hand in 1938). Brazilian integralists and many other fascisms also weren't racially based.
[0] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3042046/does... [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2021.1... [2] https://www.fairobserver.com/economics/china-and-its-mentor-... [3] https://www.thinkchina.sg/politics/construction-singapore-mo...
For what it's worth is well accepted among most fascism historians that racism, at least in the sense of adopting racial laws and such came late, and mostly as a byproduct of the German alliance.
As for what did Italy do itself before that, if you're referring to the wars in Africa, that has nothing to do with fascism, and the two biggest colonial powers at the time were both very sane democracies.
But any way you swing it fascism did not stand for that very long and now days usually is intended to mean a police or military state. Or more often because nobody knows what fascism is but everyone knows that it is objectively bad it is what you call your political opponent. case closed, argument won.
- it lacks the reactionary qualities of fascism: ideological rejections of liberal democracy, rationalism, and it's equal distance from capitalism and socialism.
- it lacks the revolutionary qualities: the centrality of the creation of a new man, the overthrowing of institutions through total mobilization (not just military, but the entire society)
- it lacks the expansionist, colonialist, ethnic-and-cultural focuses of fascisms
Under this light, there is one, and only one other government that chased the same revolutionary and reactionary ideologies, nazi Germany, with a distant second one being imperial Japan.
Spain, Chile, Argentina, Portugal are (very, very) distant thirds.
And even the distant thirds often lack the fascist qualities:
- Pinochet's came from a coup, not from a movement. It had none of the revolutionary or reactionary qualities of fascism.
- Spain's Franco outright rejected overt fascism starting already since ww2 and purged its own party from fascist elements, instead embracing a more classical combination of nationalism-monarchy-religion authoritarian regime.
- Argentina's Peronism allowed both for elections, dissent and lacked any expansionist or totalitarian ambitions.
- Salazar's Portugal outright refused mass-mobilization and the revolutionary dynamism of fascism. It exalted obedience and order, not conquest and transformation.
> But any way you swing it fascism did not stand for that very long
It absolutely did, from start to the end of the regimes in all of Italy, Germany and Japan.
The reason you find it odd is because you really can't find another country that the citizen have such a high trust towards the government and let the government do (almost) anything they wanted, yet the government doesn't abuse this power (mostly, at least) and continue focus on long term benefits of the country (rather than short term gains because the political party need to survive the next election in few years time)
> One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their military has barely been used.
Ther reason is quite simple: Singapore is a very small country and it is very easily to be invaded. The high military spending is more of a deterent.
> What would you even call their socioeconomic system?
It is very much a free market capitalism with some state intervention, similar to many other countries. If anything, I would say Singapore is more free market than many western countries due to the fact that the government is very pro-business as the country is heavily rely on foreign businesses to survive.
I don't believe this is true. If you're talking about Non-Constituency Members of Parliament, they are consolation prizes given to best losers, and there are many things they cannot vote on. Moreover, the ruling party almost never lifts the party whip, i.e. members of the party CANNOT vote against the party line (without being kicked out of the party, which results in them being kicked out of parliament). In other words, since the ruling party already has a majority, any opposing votes literally do not matter.
If you aren't talking about the NCMP scheme, then I do not know what you're talking about, as the ruling party does institute policies that are beneficial for the incumbent party.
Pure authoritarianism.
Singapore is many things but not none of what you've written.
A powerful passport doesn't mean they can move anywhere to live permanently and if they choose to become a citizen of the country they do move to then they will lose their Singaporean citizenship.
American freedom of expression is a singular achievement.
As someone who moved from Singapore to the UK, this assessment is really quite funny. The Online Safety Act says hello.
Most countries are going to fall flat compared to the United States. Singapore is pretty amazing.
It's not a single party state. Over 1/3rd of Singaporeans vote for the non-PAP candidates.
What you’re describing is state capitalism, which is largely what the economic system is in China, Russia, and to some degree in the US. It’s where the government intervenes in the economy and controls critical corporations and industries
Personally, I don't believe in preventive effects of draconian punishment, but I also don't believe in cokeheads. Being a cokehead in Singapore means risking facing the mandatory death sentence for posession of more than 30g of cocaine, which depending on the habit is a months supply max for some.
People with substance abuse problems are generally the "get more every day or two" type not the "have a month's supply on hand" type.
And I really believe more in corporal punishment for a lot of things than the maze of fines, legal costs, and probation which really seems more like complicated inconvenience.
For drunk driving, sexual assault, and grand theft the appropriate punishment for the first offense is a public beating where they stop half way through and give you a chance to admit guilt and apologize on camera or they keep going. It would be particularly good for any fraud that nets you, say over a million dollars. Only for the kinds of crimes that have significant victims.
This is obscene. It is torture. If you torture people, they usually confess, regardless of innocence or guilt.
And yes, call it what you want but yes I'm advocating for pain in exchange for serious crime.
Either the punishment is appropriate, or not. If it is inappropriate, change it. If it is appropriate, don't give a 50% discount for saying "sorry" when told to. First, it means nothing; no one reasonable will think that the "sorry" was sincere. Second, if once in a while an innocent person is incorrectly sentenced, you insist that they either apologize for something they didn't do, or get 2x the punishment an actually guilty criminal would get.
What is the police force isn't completely honest and has a tendency to incriminate say black men?
What if the police force isn't particularly competent?
What if the man was framed?
Cruel and unusual punishment is regarded as sadistic; and how and who decides what is okay or not? I would not be wholly surprised to find the definition of "violent crime" becoming a political football.
What happens if you get an Islamic Government in? cutting off hands is okay?
What about also when people find themselves in desperate situations through no fault or their own and turn to crime to survive? we should torture them?
The recent corruption case of a Minister taking gifts of hundreds of thousands resulted in a few months custodial sentence for the Minister and nothing for the rich “donor”.
Massive money laundering scam? Stiff punishment for the foreigners and kid gloves for the local lawyers and bankers who facilitated it all.
Singaporeans constantly complain about how being rich in Singapore protects from actual punishment.
It’s not like the government woke up one day and started to cane scammers. There have been years of educational programs in different languages. A campaign with special focus on protecting the elderly. Every time you transfer money with your online banking app you get a warning about scammers. They instituted an SMS registry that results in unknown numbers (for instance pretending to be your bank) showing up as “LIKELY SCAM” on your phone. That hasn’t eradicated the problem, so now the punishment goes up.
Imagine a government that actually protects its citizens…
So for her to fall for a scam has us worried, it might be a sign of neurodegenerative disease. She went from sharp as a tack when it came to ignoring scammers, to falling into it. I'm sure this is a very common theme. These parasites prey on the elderly losing their mental acuity
Scamming would be much less prevalent if money were trackable, scam transactions would be possible to roll back, yes, transitively, from all the downstream users. The downstream users would then be keenly interested in the provenance of the money they're being paid. Ironically, blockchain-based currencies are perfectly trackable (at least in theory; mixers make it harder). Sadly, this has a ton of obvious privacy implications.
Now, obviously, Singapore's methods aren't perfect - a common complaint I heard was that money can buy you kid gloves - and I imagine the Supreme Court smackdown over caning versus the 8th Amendment would be biblical. But any return to broken windows governance would be much appreciated.
I have lived in a lot of places.
Logically, therefore, they have superior crime policy we should learn from - nothing to do with culture.
I live in Switzerland. There is no public caning for chewing bubble gum here.
Yet it is an extremely nice place to live in.
I have also lived in Dubai where there is sharia law. Also a nice place for most people
Also, I'd say that it's only low crime when it comes to small crimes. If you include financial crime then it's probably the opposite.
2OEH8eoCRo0•3mo ago
tomcam•3mo ago
The obvious correct answer is Bob Weilbacher, who fired me with no reason given from my cherished $3.75/hour job in the mailroom at Cal State Fullerton back in 1979.