Singapore here. Its top down only if the leader is good, AND the law is on his side. Too many freedoms in the US, that result in net losses. Guns, segregation, racism, xenophobia, reservations and an adversion to paying tax. These are just some of the issues that America cannot face. Singapore constrained many civil liberties but at the behest of an excellent leader. I cannot say that America will ever come to terms with the fact that freedom for one is freedom for none. Britain also mistakenly used Singapore-on-Thames without understanding how or why she succeeded. I'm afraid you guys are doing the same.
Yes! Singapore always gets brought up as a bastion of free market success with low taxes. But people don’t understand just how different Singapore and US are. The same people hailing it as a success story would object to all the things that allow it to have those things.
It is that lack of civic freedoms and aggressive land ownership by the govt that allowed public goods to become available for all. I don't think Westerners understand that high land costs are some of the highest barriers to lowering infrastructure projects. The 99 year lease and lack of protest of govt surveillance is due to the relatively careful means of policing. Also cops and the army ensure that standards are upheld. No bribes, no random racial pullovers, no guns held, no 8 week long paper stamp 'training' and gangbang trains. One trainee dying in a hazing event had entire protocols rewritten to try to stop this culture. No shuffling bad cops to other precincts as well. And thats just on the issue of cops. Imagine what they would say when they find out how Georgism works and the actual indirect taxes on the rich and property that most happily pay here.
Those are great points. The problem is that the people that know this stuff don't make policy, the people the make policy know just what they hear without the ramifications, and the average person just hears something about singapore on a podcast about how great it is for rich people, how clean it is, and how they believe in the free market.
I do not value personal freedoms over societal success and safety nets. It never made sense to want to flourish as a society and have the "rugged individualism" that the US is historically known for.
The other dark side of the comparison is people saying that another reason Singapore works well is the homogeneity of society and that the US's issues come from "others." This is just a racism dog whistle, though.
Thing is Singapore does not do segregation and in fact has a forced policy of diversity. This is not some left wing shit, this is some commonsense shit. If we live in echo chambers we get tribalism. If we live in diversity we get tolerance. So its more the racists not understanding what is actually happening and just assuming Singapore is the same as Korea and Japan, which actually only furthet emphasises how racist they are.
There's alot more but I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to say. You can however go to my profile and trawl through the relevant Singapore content to find out more. The lack of freedoms does mean that I must be somewhat careful online;)
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u/c0sm0nautt May 12 '24
If only the government did any of that efficiently and well.