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Bottom line is: Singapore is not for everyone. If you're willing to give up some civil liberties for an efficiently-run nation where you can generally walk aro

Bottom line is: Singapore is not for everyone. If you're willing to give up some civil liberties for an efficiently-run nation where you can generally walk around without fear of getting stabbed or robbed, then it's the perfect place for you.

throwanem 10y ago
> Bottom line is: Singapore is not for everyone. This seems an oddly difficult proposition to grasp for a lot of people who have never lived in, visited, or been anywhere near Singapore, nor have any plans to do so.
- joe_the_user 10y ago
  Yeah, "Singapore is not for everyone" seems an extremely odd argument to me, given that unlike a health club or a gated community, the majority of Singapore's residents don't have any easy way to leave. The headline of this article is: "More than half of S'poreans would migrate if given a choice: Survey" http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20121007-376116.html http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Singapore/Story/A1S...
  - throwanem 10y ago
    "More than half of a tiny and almost certainly unrepresentative fraction of Singaporeans" would be a more accurate description. Arguing from headlines seems like it must be an uncomfortable place to be. The CIA World Factbook estimates a 1.5% net immigration rate for Singapore in 2015. They don't seem to break out immigration vs. emigration, so I'm not sure how frequently people leave, but a quick glance at Google results for "singapore emigration" suggests people leave frequently enough for some pundits to consider it a problem, which makes it seem improbable that doing so is all that difficult.
    - joe_the_user 10y ago
      That people describe emigration as a problem says something. Most citizens of any given nation won't leave, and generally feel like they can't leave, because emigration requires either resources and skills or extreme desperation. Virtually all nations of the world put a fairly high bar to immigration. For this reason, a nation's willingness to allow immigration at all tends to determine it's immigration rate since there are numerous areas of the world whose citizens are in extreme desperation. You observe this from this chart of world immigration rates. Sweden is a pleasant destination for immigrants, Jordon and Libya less so but both have high immigrations rates. The original argument was "Singapore is not for everyone" and my point that Singapore pretty much is for everyone who's a citizen without a whole lot of resources. It's not a matter of taste akin to an exclusive club. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=sn&v=27 http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=sn&v=27
    - jpatokal 10y ago
      Singapore can be a very uncomfortable place to live if you're Singaporean, poor and unskilled, which is also precisely the combination that makes it virtually impossible to emigrate. Every now and then the gov't media accidentally lets the veil slip, as in a story about a retired old lady who worked as a hawker centre table cleaner with wages of around S$190 per month (around US$100, this in a country with higher cost of living than the US) and slept in a pile of cardboard boxes on a public housing block's "void deck" (outdoor forecourt). This wasn't the story, mind you, since this is what happens to you if you have no retirement funds or family to support you in Singapore; the story was that somebody had stolen her S$90 of savings.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    Seems like a vague question without knowing exactly what constraint they're worried about. Are they too poor to afford the move? Singaporean expats have a harder time getting visas? Restrictions on getting a passport to leave? We see similar figures for NYC, which just underscores the need to pin down what "can leave" means: http://patch.com/new-york/westislip/would-you-leave-ny-if-you-could-poll-says-41-percent-of-new-yorkers-would http://patch.com/new-york/westislip/would-you-leave-ny-if-yo...
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Bottom line is: Singapore will give you safe nation to live in if you give up control of your life, labor protections, ability to find truths about country (eg fair media), and control over your future (dissent suppression). Several thousand years of world history show that is going to be a bad deal for many people in the country and maybe the country as a whole given enough time. They do quite a few things right but need to counter the worst parts before it's too late. Might become the capitalist version of North Korea some day. Or something less severe but similarly hard to mentally escape or improve on via politics.
- visakanv 10y ago
  Singaporean here. How exactly have I given up the "ability to find truths about (my) country" and "control over my future"? Do elaborate, please!
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Do you have an independent media that can report on whatever goes on in your country, including negative info, with immunity to prosecution? Do you have individual protection in that case? If you don't, then you can't reliably get the truth except for people taking personal risks on blogs and stuff. You can only hope your regime will provide it to you through media they control. And never do anything seriously wrong. Having read history books, I don't think that's even possible in the long run.
    - visakanv 10y ago
      How do you define "independent media"? My impression is that the media industry in Singapore is near-centralized because of the size of the market. There's really just not enough people to support multiple large news organizations. I'm not sure if there's anything that the media "can't report". When the government fucks up, the media reports it. When a terrorist escaped detention, it was reported. When soldiers die, it gets reported. When there's corruption, it's reported. [1] [2] [3]. What sort of event do you foresee happening that wouldn't get reported? The media even acknowledges the State's past detentions-without-trial [4] [5]. There's some visible bias, but it's visible, and any intelligent person can infer that things are a little less tidy and clean. I actually protested against some attempted media regulations a few years back. None of us were prosecuted, or worried about being prosecuted. The people running our government are smart people. They know that they need to be respected and be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people. You can't really hide anything for long, and especially not somewhere as small as Singapore. The truth always comes out sooner or later. I dare say it's far likelier that states like the USA hide things from their people– and that's not a value judgement about the USA itself, but a statement about the difference in size of Govt. A tiny island-city-state can't sustain the sort of epic state apparatus that would get up to crazy shit. [1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-scdf-chief-peter-lim-found-guilty-of-corruption http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-scdf-chief-peter-li... [2] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-mfa-protocol-chief-lim-cheng-hoe-sentenced-to-15-months-jail-for-cheating http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-mfa-protocol-chief-... [3] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-cpib-assistant-director-edwin-yeo-jailed-10-years-for-criminal-breach-of-trust http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-cpib-assistant-dire... [4] http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/revisiting-operation-coldstore http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/revisiting-operation-col... [5] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-government-responds-to-allegations-by-ex-detainee-poh-soo-kai-on-operation http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-government-r...

throwanem 10y ago

> Bottom line is: Singapore is not for everyone. This seems an oddly difficult proposition to grasp for a lot of people who have never lived in, visited, or been anywhere near Singapore, nor have any plans to do so.

joe_the_user 10y ago
Yeah, "Singapore is not for everyone" seems an extremely odd argument to me, given that unlike a health club or a gated community, the majority of Singapore's residents don't have any easy way to leave. The headline of this article is: "More than half of S'poreans would migrate if given a choice: Survey" http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20121007-376116.html http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Singapore/Story/A1S...
- throwanem 10y ago
  "More than half of a tiny and almost certainly unrepresentative fraction of Singaporeans" would be a more accurate description. Arguing from headlines seems like it must be an uncomfortable place to be. The CIA World Factbook estimates a 1.5% net immigration rate for Singapore in 2015. They don't seem to break out immigration vs. emigration, so I'm not sure how frequently people leave, but a quick glance at Google results for "singapore emigration" suggests people leave frequently enough for some pundits to consider it a problem, which makes it seem improbable that doing so is all that difficult.
  - joe_the_user 10y ago
    That people describe emigration as a problem says something. Most citizens of any given nation won't leave, and generally feel like they can't leave, because emigration requires either resources and skills or extreme desperation. Virtually all nations of the world put a fairly high bar to immigration. For this reason, a nation's willingness to allow immigration at all tends to determine it's immigration rate since there are numerous areas of the world whose citizens are in extreme desperation. You observe this from this chart of world immigration rates. Sweden is a pleasant destination for immigrants, Jordon and Libya less so but both have high immigrations rates. The original argument was "Singapore is not for everyone" and my point that Singapore pretty much is for everyone who's a citizen without a whole lot of resources. It's not a matter of taste akin to an exclusive club. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=sn&v=27 http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=sn&v=27
  - jpatokal 10y ago
    Singapore can be a very uncomfortable place to live if you're Singaporean, poor and unskilled, which is also precisely the combination that makes it virtually impossible to emigrate. Every now and then the gov't media accidentally lets the veil slip, as in a story about a retired old lady who worked as a hawker centre table cleaner with wages of around S$190 per month (around US$100, this in a country with higher cost of living than the US) and slept in a pile of cardboard boxes on a public housing block's "void deck" (outdoor forecourt). This wasn't the story, mind you, since this is what happens to you if you have no retirement funds or family to support you in Singapore; the story was that somebody had stolen her S$90 of savings.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Seems like a vague question without knowing exactly what constraint they're worried about. Are they too poor to afford the move? Singaporean expats have a harder time getting visas? Restrictions on getting a passport to leave? We see similar figures for NYC, which just underscores the need to pin down what "can leave" means: http://patch.com/new-york/westislip/would-you-leave-ny-if-you-could-poll-says-41-percent-of-new-yorkers-would http://patch.com/new-york/westislip/would-you-leave-ny-if-yo...

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Bottom line is: Singapore will give you safe nation to live in if you give up control of your life, labor protections, ability to find truths about country (eg fair media), and control over your future (dissent suppression). Several thousand years of world history show that is going to be a bad deal for many people in the country and maybe the country as a whole given enough time. They do quite a few things right but need to counter the worst parts before it's too late. Might become the capitalist version of North Korea some day. Or something less severe but similarly hard to mentally escape or improve on via politics.

visakanv 10y ago
Singaporean here. How exactly have I given up the "ability to find truths about (my) country" and "control over my future"? Do elaborate, please!
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Do you have an independent media that can report on whatever goes on in your country, including negative info, with immunity to prosecution? Do you have individual protection in that case? If you don't, then you can't reliably get the truth except for people taking personal risks on blogs and stuff. You can only hope your regime will provide it to you through media they control. And never do anything seriously wrong. Having read history books, I don't think that's even possible in the long run.
  - visakanv 10y ago
    How do you define "independent media"? My impression is that the media industry in Singapore is near-centralized because of the size of the market. There's really just not enough people to support multiple large news organizations. I'm not sure if there's anything that the media "can't report". When the government fucks up, the media reports it. When a terrorist escaped detention, it was reported. When soldiers die, it gets reported. When there's corruption, it's reported. [1] [2] [3]. What sort of event do you foresee happening that wouldn't get reported? The media even acknowledges the State's past detentions-without-trial [4] [5]. There's some visible bias, but it's visible, and any intelligent person can infer that things are a little less tidy and clean. I actually protested against some attempted media regulations a few years back. None of us were prosecuted, or worried about being prosecuted. The people running our government are smart people. They know that they need to be respected and be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people. You can't really hide anything for long, and especially not somewhere as small as Singapore. The truth always comes out sooner or later. I dare say it's far likelier that states like the USA hide things from their people– and that's not a value judgement about the USA itself, but a statement about the difference in size of Govt. A tiny island-city-state can't sustain the sort of epic state apparatus that would get up to crazy shit. [1] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-scdf-chief-peter-lim-found-guilty-of-corruption http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-scdf-chief-peter-li... [2] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-mfa-protocol-chief-lim-cheng-hoe-sentenced-to-15-months-jail-for-cheating http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-mfa-protocol-chief-... [3] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-cpib-assistant-director-edwin-yeo-jailed-10-years-for-criminal-breach-of-trust http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/ex-cpib-assistant-dire... [4] http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/revisiting-operation-coldstore http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/revisiting-operation-col... [5] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-government-responds-to-allegations-by-ex-detainee-poh-soo-kai-on-operation http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-government-r...