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Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

reuters.com

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Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#41

Post by lostlogin »

danielweber wrote: post #35
javert wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years) That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception. China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US…

I'm going to ask for some more explanation of how China is more economically free than the US. What are my property rights like?

Well, its more free in that you canbribe people safe in the knowledge that this is how the ruling class have acted since Mao (maybe longer?). It's just a business transaction. You can also top up your milk's protein measurements by adding melamine, then use your bribing ability to shut down investigations into the dead babies. The fraud aspect is a greater freedom. Copy and steal overseas companies products and make knockoffs, with no risk of being sued, yet another freedom.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#42

Post by mseebach »

sp332 wrote: post #33
mseebach wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read that page of quotations, the whole one. All the answers are there. Particularly: "Since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press confined to truth needs no other legal restraint. The public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions on a full hearing of all parties, and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty o…

That quote is from 1805, the second one I posted is from 1814, after he'd had 9 years more experience with a free press. Three years after that he wrote: "From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1816. ME 1…

Read the speech for context - http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres17.html - paragraphs 11-13.

Yes, there exists "laws provided by the States against false and defamatory publications", but even when not enforced, the citizens saw through it, "consolatory to the friend of man who believes that he may be trusted with the control of his own affairs".

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#43

Post by mseebach »

revelation wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

China is also our enemy, so you will be hearing lots and lots of their human rights violations. Nobody seems to particularly care about Singapore. Then we also have the UAE, where women can't drive cars. But they are our friend and supply our oil, so we'll never hear about that. You will even find documentaries on job opportunities in Dubai et al on TV.

You're confusing the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#45

Post by PeterisP »

javert wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singapore and China are proof of two things: 1) Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years); 2) The global business community doesn't give a shit about democracy, as demonstrated by its rush to embrace China, the Middle East, etc, and the corresponding apologizing about their political systems. I nearly puked on Metro North the other…

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years) That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception. China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US…

Freedom and "economic freedom" are two orthogonal, completely different things. You can (and often do) have one without the other and vice versa.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#46

Post by mseebach »

rayiner wrote: post #40
javert wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years) That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception. China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US…

You're playing fast and loose with the word "free." Sure, no country in history has ever been a utopia of freedom, but I don't consider any country "free" in any sense of the word (even "1% free") that doesn't have meaningful democracy. Indeed, that's what "freedom" has meant for the better part of the last 300-400 years: political self-determination, not "economic freedom." I can't look at a map and conceive of livi…

What China shows (and what counters the US rhetoric) is that evidently economic freedom can (at least to some extend) cause prosperity without political freedom. Common wisdom has predicted the rise of some kind of political freedom in China for years now, but what has actually been seen to be on the rise is better governance - an oft-cited example is the case of Bo Xilai[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Xilai#Downfall

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#47

Post by PeterisP »

mseebach wrote: post #19
revelation wrote: post #7

Oops, the cool, tax-saving getaway is a fascist dictatorship. Who could have known.

It's generally well known that Singapore has no political freedom and only limited freedom of speech. However, financial freedom is in short supply in the world, and Singapore is one of the nicer places that have it. To call Singapore a "fascist dictatorship" is only true in the most literal senses of the words. It's by no means perfect, but Singapore has a much better record on human rights than anyone generally con…

If a place "has no political freedom and only limited freedom of speech", as you say, then how it is better than Belarus?

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#48

Post by enraged_camel »

rayiner wrote: post #40
javert wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom is not a necessary condition for economic prosperity (which undermines a lot of American rhetoric of the last 50 years) That is demonstrably false. Everywhere you look, throughout history, the more free a country is, the more economically prosperous it becomes. In fact, _every single example_ fits this pattern. There is not a single exception. China and Singapore are much more economically free than the US…

You're playing fast and loose with the word "free." Sure, no country in history has ever been a utopia of freedom, but I don't consider any country "free" in any sense of the word (even "1% free") that doesn't have meaningful democracy. Indeed, that's what "freedom" has meant for the better part of the last 300-400 years: political self-determination, not "economic freedom." I can't look at a map and conceive of livi…

>>There is a reason the Chinese crawl over themselves to come to America, not the other way around.

Yes, it's called "wanting to be able to make a decent living." Not "wanting to be able to say whatever one wants."

It turns out the latter is not a prerequisite of the former.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#49

Post by enraged_camel »

kmfrk wrote: post #39

Singapore is like a YouTube sketch of what the Apple App Store would be like, if it were a country.

It's funny how some people always find a way to take a stab at Apple, even when commenting on completely unrelated topics.

Re: Singapore to regulate high traffic websites that report on Singapore

#50

Post by potatolicious »

PeterisP wrote: post #47
mseebach wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's generally well known that Singapore has no political freedom and only limited freedom of speech. However, financial freedom is in short supply in the world, and Singapore is one of the nicer places that have it. To call Singapore a "fascist dictatorship" is only true in the most literal senses of the words. It's by no means perfect, but Singapore has a much better record on human rights than anyone generally con…

If a place "has no political freedom and only limited freedom of speech", as you say, then how it is better than Belarus?

This is a salient question. I'm not familiar with human rights abuses in Belarus, but some cursory research indicates that there's a high degree of intersection between their abuses and Singapore's abuses.

For one, they both take political prisoners. They both abuse the judiciary as a means of silencing opposition. Show trials and trumped up charges against political opponents? Yep, and yep.

Saliently, from the Wikipedia article on this subject[0]:

> "International documents reflect that the Belarusian courts that are subject to an authoritarian executive apparatus, routinely disregard the rule of law and exist to rubber-stamp decisions made outside the courtroom; this is tantamount to the de facto non-existence of courts as impartial judicial forums."

This is pretty similar to the claims that have been leveled at Singapore in the past. The use of trumped-up criminal charges to silence and even imprison political dissidents.

They're even similar in the Press Freedom rankings (147th vs. 151st).

The only major difference is that Belarus has been frequently accused to racist oppression of their ethnic minorities, whereas Singapore's abuses do not seem to be race-based.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Belarus

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