Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

freemalaysiatoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 110 posts

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#71

Post by jameslk »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #3

Singapore is an odd country. The only country, to my knowledge, that had independence thrust upon it without its consent. Extremely prosperous compared to its neighbors. An autocratic, single party state where the government is so popular that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices. One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their…

> 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.

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

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#72

Post by digianarchist »

rauljordan2020 wrote: post #58
digianarchist wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No freedom of press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, government owns/operates roughly ⅓ of the economy that features many state monopolies, the PAP maintains a gerrymandered control over the electorate, criticizing the government lands you in court for defamation and conveniently bankrupts can't run for parliament. Singapore is many things but not none of what you've written.

Singaporeans have insanely high quality of life and high pride in their system and people. They have an immense number of negative freedoms that the average person across the world could only dream of: freedom from violence, freedom from the devastating effects of drug addiction on families and society, freedom from poverty, freedom from corruption, freedom from instability. For the average person looking to raise a…

Singaporeans have chosen economic security and social authoritarianism over the freedoms we enjoy in the West. That's their choice.

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.

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#73

Post by aitchnyu »

nine_k wrote: post #50
JSR_FDED wrote: post #43

The damage done by scammers is enormous. Families losing their life’s savings. Quite often these scams are perpetrated on less sophisticated people so the economic damage to them is even more devastating. 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 yo…

What would actually help the scammed families would be getting the lost resources back, at least partially. I realize that it may be hard, for the resources may have been squandered. 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…

In India, people who are n transfers away from a fraudsters account had entire accounts frozen. Also heard of officials holding the same power over strangers bank accounts. Now banks are able to lein only the affected amount from recipient.

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#74

Post by pyuser583 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #9
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #3

Singapore is an odd country. The only country, to my knowledge, that had independence thrust upon it without its consent. Extremely prosperous compared to its neighbors. An autocratic, single party state where the government is so popular that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices. One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their…

>What would you even call their socioeconomic system? 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).

I’ve heard lots of other places called “Asian Switzerland.” Bhutan, and and rural parts of Myanmar.

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#75

Post by chrischen »

nexle wrote: post #31
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #3

Singapore is an odd country. The only country, to my knowledge, that had independence thrust upon it without its consent. Extremely prosperous compared to its neighbors. An autocratic, single party state where the government is so popular that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices. One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their…

> Singapore is an odd country 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 t…

No need to abuse anything until shit hits the fan.

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#76

Post by colonial »

After spending a summer working in Singapore, I fully support introducing corporal punishment to America (and accelerated capital punishment for drug trafficking offenses.) It turns out that - surprise! - actually punishing criminals where it hurts, even for "petty" offenses, works wonders for making your country a nice place to live.

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.

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#77

Post by toomuchtodo »

spc476 wrote: post #65
radpanda wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never been there but whenever I read something about it I get the vibe that they’re an HOA with a military.

William Gibson got a lifetime ban for calling it "Disney with the death penalty" in a Wired article.

https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ | https://archive.today/twY5Y

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#78

Post by ETH_start »

One thing I noticed when I was traveling in Singapore is that the businesses don't put their patio chairs away at night because unlike where I'm originally from on the West Coast, they won't get stolen if left out. I think there's thousands of these small benefits that come with a low crime society that are hard to quantify but cumulatively add up.

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#79

Post by roenxi »

ebbi wrote: post #35
idle_zealot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 It's just State Capitalism, isn't it? Like China. A market-based economy with free enterprise, but no illusions…

I'm not saying democracy is a failed project all together, but something that has been on my mind a lot recently is that democracy is quite inefficient - where I'm from anyway (New Zealand). We are a small country, with general elections every four years. So most of the decisions our government takes a less bold, and optimized for short term interests and to get the next cycle vote. And when we have had times a gover…

You're pinning a people problem on democracy. If the people of New Zealand are happy being a little out of the way island that is a nice place for a holiday then that is what they'll be. If they want to be as economically prosperous as Singapore then they have to argue it out and get a critical mass of people to decide that they want to be wealthier in a take-concrete-actions sort of way. They can do that if they want and they don't need long term government projects to achieve it. There aren't that many people on the islands, it is a pretty homogeneous place and they don't need any help coordinating themselves.

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.

Re: Singapore to cane scammers as billions lost in financial crimes

#80

Post by georgefrowny »

cbdevidal wrote: post #51
shoobiedoo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom just lost about fifteen thousand dollars. The sad part is, she knew full well, for years now, if you hear a certain accent from a cold call, just hang up the phone. She received calls almost every day since she still needs a landline to talk to family, so she is very well versed in avoiding them. So for her to fall for a scam has us worried, it might be a sign of neurodegenerative disease. She went from sharp…

Or they used a different accent

Relying on accents as a tell is only going to get less predictive due to real time accent conversion services like https://krisp.ai/ai-accent-conversion/
Post reply on HN