101–110 of 110 posts
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I don’t agree with that assessment at all. I’m free to criticise my government in the UK in any way I wish to. I would have no such freedom in Singapore.
As long as you are not criticizing the UK.gov's stance on Palestine.
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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 wan…
But most New Zealander's aren't happy with the way things are. That's the point. That's why I used public transport as an example. Most working New Zealander's are unhappy about the public transport system, and always compare it to other major cities (Sydney, London, etc) and how we massively fall short. But the times where a government has tried to carry out the major work, it either gets reversed when a successive…
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.
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.
Does the low crime come from the strict laws, or from being tiny? My money is that most of it is the latter. 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.
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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.
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> "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." This is crazy to me. How far are we willing to go in terms of restricting freedoms for safety?
But this is just part of how Singapore is different than America and Europe. China has even stricter controls in terms of limiting what individuals can do with their bank accounts (you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all!). 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…
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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.
My point is they see themselves as having more freedoms than the west does in places that matter to their daily life: freedom from poverty, violent crime, the devastating effects of drugs on families, social chaos, and corruption. To Singaporeans, these are real freedoms. They’d much rather have that quality of life than live in homeless-infested cities with drugs where they can at least criticize the government.
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> 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. This is obscene. It is torture. If you torture people, they usually confess, regardless of innocence or guilt.
I wouldn't mind public torture for violent crimes (hey, if it is acceptable to torture the victim, what is it unacceptable to torture the criminal?), but the part that when they apologize they get a 50% discount is stupid. 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 rea…
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?
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Most western European countries are as restrictive on speech as Singapore but are just dishonest. American freedom of expression is a singular achievement.
I don’t agree with that assessment at all. I’m free to criticise my government in the UK in any way I wish to. I would have no such freedom in Singapore.
As someone who moved from Singapore to the UK, this assessment is really quite funny. The Online Safety Act says hello.
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But this is just part of how Singapore is different than America and Europe. China has even stricter controls in terms of limiting what individuals can do with their bank accounts (you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all!). 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…
you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all! 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 ev…
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.
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But this is just part of how Singapore is different than America and Europe. China has even stricter controls in terms of limiting what individuals can do with their bank accounts (you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all!). 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…
> Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty — America probably the most so 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 renoun…
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.