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Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

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Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#251

Post by dangus »

hattmall wrote: post #138
dangus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your plan is endless growth? When is the population high enough to stop doing that? How is that supposed to work logistically? In what scenario does that not result in societal collapse within a short few lifetimes? Endless growth and the inevitable planetary destruction/exhaustion from that process isn’t good for anyone, either. It’s easier to adapt to a shrinking population than one that is too large to sustain…

>I hate to say it but tossing bible versus around isn’t going to make your case very well Not if you actually read the verse, it's a relevant, experience driven philosophical statement.

Are we reading the same verse? I read it and it doesn’t seem relevant at all. It almost looks like the commenter pasted the wrong book/chapter/verse.

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#252

Post by dangus »

somenameforme wrote: post #202
dangus wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The global total fertility rate is already just above your stated ideal rate of 2.1, it's currently at 2.35, so I am really confused at why the comment I originally responded to thought we should all shack up and fuck during the pandemic.

I don't think you're discussing in good faith there. Obviously what happens in Chad, Nigeria, and so on has relatively little consequence on what happens in America and the Western world in general.

Please don’t confuse disagreement with discussion in bad faith. I promise you I’m making a serious argument.

It has consequence because trade exists. The Western world imports and exports goods to Africa. If the West loses population it doesn’t mean it loses economic output because there are customers and vendors in other countries with higher growth rates.

Country boundaries are arbitrary.

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#253

Post by marssaxman »

jpadkins wrote: post #58
marssaxman wrote: post #53

What a strange premise. Aside from the brief period of infamy around the Michael Fay case (mid-90s, a teenager caned for acts of petty vandalism), when were Americans ever paying attention to Singapore? The author keeps referring to "right-wing" this and that, so presumably he is buried too deep in some weird political subculture to realize that his question makes little sense to the rest of us.

Tyler Cowen used to blog about Singapore monthly, and now he does not. He reflected on why he doesn't. He admitted that he doesn't because its not cool to people in power. I find that a funny admission because I long suspected that academia's basic function is to suck up to power and justify whatever decisions the elite make.

Thanks, that's helpful context about the author.

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#254

Post by dangus »

somenameforme wrote: post #204
dangus wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear about your economical plan to extract resources and populate the rest of the solar system. It currently costs approximately $4,000 per kg to transport anything into space, that's current bargain basement SpaceX pricing. It also consumes non-renewable fossil fuels to do so. Let me know how you plan to figure out planetary terraforming, gravity manipulation (so we can live on planets with vastly differ…

Falcon Heavy costs around $1,400 per kg. This is still quite a lot but it can be contrasted against the ~$54,000 per kg from Space Shuttle to understand why the 'hype' around Starship is justified, with the big goal there being to drop another couple of orders of magnitude off the price. At that point costs will be low enough that the door to space will finally be open to full commercial exploitation.

I’ll buy your argument for the sake of it. We are killing two orders of magnitude of cost.

$14 per kg to get something to space.

Well, right now a gallon of gasoline all-in after extraction, refinement, transportation, and taxes retails for $3-4 in the US.

So that gallon of gasoline isn’t worth transporting to and from space. That gasoline would cost $38 just to import it from space (2.7kg).

Okay, fine, we’re just doing space mining to get stuff like precious metals: platinum, gold, etc. not sure what societal problems that solves, but hey, here we are.

Here’s where I stop buying your argument for the sake of it: you’re telling me we are chopping 2 orders of magnitude off the price, but then you’d have to explain to me how sending material to space is going to be cheaper than UPS Ground Saver retail rates.

Elon wants to launch solar panels into space and send power back to earth…sure fine but why is any utility company considering doing that rather than putting them in a former corn field in Nebraska? The amount of acreage the USA blows on fire ethanol production alone is enough land to power the entire country with terrestrial solar power, the cheapest form of energy on the market.

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#255

Post by csa »

deaux wrote: post #100
csa wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reasonable policing Policing SOPs in East Asia (incl. Singapore) is different than policing SOPs in the west. Typically people are warned, often multiple times, that they are in danger of experiencing the less kind side of local law. Once the switch is flipped, this gentle hand becomes an iron fist. I will bet dollars to donuts that the person who was held without charge for decades (mentioned above) was completely…

You quoted "reasonable", but nothing what you said has any effect on reasonableness. If someone warns you that they're going to murder you if you post another 5 comments on HackerNews, and keeps you up-to-date with every comment you make, nothing about those warnings makes the subsequent murder after your 5th comment more reasonable than if they hadn't given those warnings.

> You quoted "reasonable", but nothing what you said has any effect on reasonableness.

Being notified that you are or have been breaking the law and being told that there will be severe consequences if you don’t stop seems reasonable to me.

It may not be how we do it in the west, but it’s hard to argue that this can’t be perceived as reasonable.

Let me give you an example that opened my eyes. It’s one of many, but it’s one that you may have heard of.

Michal Fay was caned in Singapore in the 1990s. I was so put off by this, that I swore never to go to Singapore. I thought that the punishment far exceeded that which could be justified by the crimes he committed (petty stuff like vandalizing cars).

Then, within a 6 month period, I met two families who lived as expatriates in Singapore at the same time, one in the same community.

They all said that MF was a pariah. They also both said that he and his family had been given gradually escalating warnings over a short period of time, with the next to last one being “MF needs to leave Singapore now”, and the last one being “you (his family) and MF need to leave Singapore now”. Apparently the job was too good, so the family stayed. We know the rest of the story.

A decade later, I met a woman who worked in Singapore at the time, and she expressed similar sentiments.

While I still think the punishment was excessive (even reduced to 4 lashings instead of 6), I lost all pity for MF and his family. They knew what was coming, and they either didn’t understand the culture they were in, or they didn’t believe what they were told.

I’ve see similar types of policing (with warnings and an explanation of potential consequences) happen in Japan, China, and South Korea. IMHO, it works the way they want it to (mostly as an early deterrent, with very little prosecution actually taking place). This is one reason why there is such a high success rates of criminal convictions in places like Japan — if they make the effort to book you, they have overwhelming evidence, usually collected when the criminal has been warned.

We may not like the laws, we may not like the punishments, but we shouldn’t be surprised by the outcomes.

> If someone warns you that they're going to murder you if you post another 5 comments on HackerNews, and keeps you up-to-date with every comment you make, nothing about those warnings makes the subsequent murder after your 5th comment more reasonable than if they hadn't given those warnings.

Great strawman.

Posting on HN is not against the law (at least where I am).

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#256

Post by lifestyleguru »

currymj wrote: post #190
shell0x wrote: post #141

As a German expat who lived in Singapore for 3 years, it’s still the best country I ever lived in and I’ve also worked in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan HK, and Germany. Everything works, it’s very efficient, public transit and internet is good and it’s extremely safe. It also has great food and has low taxes. Most Western countries just can’t compete and while the UAE is pretty well run in some aspect, there…

Switzerland is like this and is also a real democracy. Although the food is not as good.

In Switzerland you're not going to rent or buy any housing. If a miracle somehow happens you'll live in hotel room sized studio and your full time job will be rental laws and regulations. With no housing it's irrelevant how real the democracy is there.

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#257

Post by hattmall »

dangus wrote: post #251
hattmall wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hate to say it but tossing bible versus around isn’t going to make your case very well Not if you actually read the verse, it's a relevant, experience driven philosophical statement.

Are we reading the same verse? I read it and it doesn’t seem relevant at all. It almost looks like the commenter pasted the wrong book/chapter/verse.

I don't know. I thought it made sense in that the previous commenter was lamenting the "boomers" and how everything will be better when they are gone. Without actually realizing that their isn't anything inherently problematic with boomers, it's just that they are the first generation that didn't reproduce at a replacement level. Making the aged a larger demographic than than the youth. That problem, however isn't going away, and is in fact magnified in each subsequent current generation.

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#258

Post by breppp »

philwelch wrote: post #168
Supermancho wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right. While the UAE doesn't execute people for pedophilia, per se, the homosexuality element was what allowed for it.

Many traditional cultures don’t really distinguish between homosexuality and pedarasty. That distinction, or at least the cultural recognition of a distinction, is largely a distinctive artifact of the sexual revolution, a western phenomenon.

I don't think that was the case, the executions I saw was for rape and murder of four and eight year olds

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#259

Post by Der_Einzige »

dangus wrote: post #251
hattmall wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hate to say it but tossing bible versus around isn’t going to make your case very well Not if you actually read the verse, it's a relevant, experience driven philosophical statement.

Are we reading the same verse? I read it and it doesn’t seem relevant at all. It almost looks like the commenter pasted the wrong book/chapter/verse.

You have to read the correct translation. The one that specifically references why it's good to die young

Re: Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?

#260

Post by namlem »

shell0x wrote: post #237
JCattheATM wrote: post #211

It was never 'cool'. It's a barbaric totalitarian state that hides it well. It's one of the few countries I truly don't want to ever support by spending money as a tourist there.

It’s still a significantly better place to live than America or Europe though. > It's a barbaric totalitarian state that hides it well. The same can be said about the Us which stirs up wars in other countries, kidnaps other countries presidents and has ICE arresting kids. I’d pick Singapore over the US any day of the week.

That's a matter of opinion. The US has its faults, but overall it's quite easy to have a very high quality of life here, and to live a huge variety of different lifestyles if that suits you.
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