151–160 of 245 posts
The real Disneyland also has the death penalty, since it is located in the state of California. Disneyworld likewise, since it is in Florida.
In this analogy Disney is the Singaporean government. Disney can not directly enforce the death penalty, Singapore can. So the author wants you to image Singapore as a Disneyland that could directly carry out execution. There is little justice system in-between.
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A lot of Singaporeans are unhappy with things, especially in the younger generations. If you've spent any length of time there and talked to people it's not hard to pick up on. There's a reason the government has turned up the level of repression over the past decade.
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Singapore's repression isn't exactly a secret, and if freedom is not a purpose to use your wealth for, then I don't see the point of wealth. Counterculture is healthy and natural for many reasons, and its absence is a concerning indicator for any nation.
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None of this is to say the US doesn't have its own issues with authoritarianism and repressive cultural norms. Seems like a pretty global thing right now actually.
The government banning _Wired_ because it contained a critical article immediately confirms so much of the criticism.
The U.S. also limits foreign control of its media.
and then
> The U.S. also limits foreign control of its media.
Beyond an attempt at a what aboutism, I'm not sure how these two statements are really connected. Just because Xinhua can't purchase Foxnews (which is ironically controlled by an Australian), the USA government lacks the legal power to ban anything except maybe child porn.
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Focusing on the choice of the individual child is a very American way of looking at things. Nobody chooses to be born. So what? The obligation arises out of the relationship between parents, as a category, and children, as a category. Individual choice doesn’t carry nearly as much weight in Asian culture as it does in American culture. Likewise, the notion that obligations can only arise from voluntary and consenting…
Sure; my point is that both perspectives are equally arbitrary. Neither drive me nuts.
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Thanks! This is the perfect sort of longform article to save via Pocket/Instapaper and read later on my e-reader.
One of my favourite Kobo features ;)
I personally found Singapore charming when I was there. It's a fascinating mix of several different cultures who all seem to retained many of their traditional customs. I never understood the sterile critique myself, the city never struck me as such. Gibson's main critique, from what I can tell, is the lack of much of a counterculture similar to what you'd find in the U.S. allied-bloc (Europe, U.S., Canada, Japan, So…
Singapore's repression isn't exactly a secret, and if freedom is not a purpose to use your wealth for, then I don't see the point of wealth. Counterculture is healthy and natural for many reasons, and its absence is a concerning indicator for any nation.
As for culture, Gibson is dismissive of their music and gets bothered that people in music stores don't recognize the Japanese punk band he likes. Rather than being open to the local music (which I personally have enjoyed), he's bothered that the people he meets aren't following along with the same global cosmopolitan trends he's accustomed to.
As someone from Bangladesh, I read this and think "who cares?" In 1960 Singapore was a poor third world country. Today it's as rich as the US. You cannot understand how significant such a change is to the people of the country unless you've lived in a third world country and really seen what it's like. Whatever draconian measures it took to get there, they were worth it. Fareed Zakaria's interview with Lee Kuan Yew,…
The usual fallacy, which you also make in your post, is assuming that none of that improvement would have happened under a free and democratic regime. That all improvements were because of iron-rule authoritarianism. Of course there are quite literally thousands of reasons that explain Singapore's economic growth. Attributing everything to only one of them, to the influence of an enlightened dictator, is silly. Want…
If the country you’re using as an example is in Eastern Europe, I think you may be overlooking key differences. Fareed Zakaria addresses this in his book “the Future of Freedom.” https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Re.... He explains that many of the foundations of liberal democracy were put in place during autocratic regimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom. Eastern Europe had many building blocks of democracy in place hundreds of years ago. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks.
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I don't think the example you gave holds. This is how I would characterize that: Blocking someone = not buying Wired magazine so you can't read it yourself Banning someone from the internet = banning Wired magazine so no one can ever read it
Maybe my example was poorly done, but I think it shares the same reasoning flaw that OP had in the original - the belief that a very strong denial is somehow evidence of guilt. I saw similar logic in a COVID thread recently, with someone saying essentially that the lab leak theory must be true, because China is denying it so hard. Well, that's what innocent people do too when they're wrongly accused of something.
The Chinese media often denies rumors that turn out to be true, for example, a week before Beijing instituted a car plate lottery, the local media was busy denying that it was going to happen (since everyone was rushing out to buy cars). If they took the time to deny something, then there has to be something to it right?
But this is more like given a conspiracy theory some life by vigorously denying it. If China were more western media savvy, they would just ignore the claim as too crazy to comment on. IF the USA did similar vigorous denials (since it has been suggested that the CIA engineered the virus in the lab in the USA) did the same, I'm sure people would be talking about that also.
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Singapore's repression isn't exactly a secret, and if freedom is not a purpose to use your wealth for, then I don't see the point of wealth. Counterculture is healthy and natural for many reasons, and its absence is a concerning indicator for any nation.
Singapore isn't noticeably more repressive than other countries in South East Asia. All things considered, I'd say it probably leans on the more open side, but these things are hard to judge. If people want to avoid South East Asia altogether because it's systems are too different, they're welcome to. But I don't think it makes sense to expect everyone to write off the entire region. As for culture, Gibson is dismiss…
You didn't need the laws unless you had a population who wanted to do the things.