5 ms·

Singapore and its lack of Democracy

12 points by mariorz 18y ago

mariorz 18y ago
I don't think this article is particularly good, but I've always wondered how people come to accept living without certain freedoms, so I found it interesting in this regard.
- byrneseyeview 18y ago
  For whatever reason, Singaporeans seem quite willing to discuss how strict their laws are, but Americans and Brits are not such big fans of wondering how Singapore can live with its absurdly low crime rate. https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=82856 https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=82856 This is incredible stuff: "Murder cases reported for the first half of the year declined to six in this city-state of 4.5 million people, compared to twelve cases reported for the same period in 2006. The Regional Security Officer (RSO) estimates the current number of murders at the end of 2007 to be approximately eight. All murder cases for the period have been solved. Reported incidents of rape increased for this period to 70 cases, compared to 53 cases during the same period in 2006. Motor vehicle theft and snatch theft incidents increased 25 percent during the first half of 2007. Housebreaking incidents for the first half of 2007 declined ten percent. The “outraging of Modesty,” a Singaporean crime pertaining to unwanted sexual touching, is reported to have increased a negligible amount." Twelve murders per year, in a city of 4.5 million people! New York City, a little over twice as big, is bragging that their murder rate is under 500 for the first time in decades. They are bragging that you are only 2000% more likely to get stabbed, strangled, shot or beaten to death in NYC than in Singapore. The fairest analogy is that Singapore is run the way a private business would run a nation-state. Private property maximizes the rent they can collect from their residents, but political freedom is pretty worthless. Google doesn't let users determine their search algorithm, and won't even bow down when they accidentally link to something reprehensible (Google "Jew", for example). If someone wants to switch, they can switch to Yahoo! It's instructive that it is so much cheaper to leave Singapore than to leave the US -- Singapore is a pretty small city, and there are plenty of other small, English-speaker-friendly places in the area. If the cost of switching governments got as low as the cost of switching search engines, you'd expect the quality of government to approach that of online search -- Singapore is a great example of what you get when you move along that continuum.
  - mariorz 18y ago
    Thanks for the link and those stats are indeed incredible. It's worth pointing out, however, that low crime-rates and economic prosperity are not at all uncommon in dictatorships. Examples I'm familiar with include Porfirio Diaz in Mexico or more recently Pinochet in Chile. In those cases, though, there where no "free-market" forces at play as people could not easily move to other countries.
    - byrneseyeview 18y ago
      The Díaz thing surprises me. I was under the impression that Pinochet allowed free markets, but I thought Díaz expropriated a lot.
      - mariorz 18y ago
        I meant "free-market" in the sense of the cost of switching governments you mentioned. Switching governments was just not an option. Side note: Díaz probably did some expropriations but at least not the biggest ones. Those where done during Lazaro Cardenas´s presidency.
- time_management 18y ago
  The benefit of liberal democracy is that it prevents the corrupt and powerful few from acquiring the leverage to do great damage, allowing for technological and civil progress over the long haul. Well-run dictatorships can be prosperous in the short run, but the inexorable decay into rule by a corrupt elite will bankrupt a society. Once a madman or idiot gets into power, decades or centuries of progress will be erased. One benefit of liberal democracy is that it's much more robust, relying on laws and traditions rather than the people running it. Look at how much damage the Bush Administration has done to the US. Were it not for our liberal, democratic political traditions, they'd have caused 100 times more ruin by this point, and we wouldn't have a very good chance of being rid of them in Jan. 2009.
  - mynameishere 18y ago
    One benefit of liberal democracy is that it's much more robust The normal trajectory is Louis i through xvi -> "Democracy" -> Napoleon. The kings that precede democracy are sometimes more stable that it itself... There are no large countries that are democracies that I'm aware of. If there were, they would get their Bonapartes or Bolsheviks as they always do.
  - johnyzee 18y ago
    I think the jury is still out on whether a corrupt elite cannot hijack a democratic system. You got rid of "Bush" in '93 yet here he is again. More to the point, the powers behind the Bushes and probably any other candidate you get to choose from are still there - big money sponsors. And that doesn't even touch upon the other issue, that of the corrupt elite being put in place by the democratic system itself, as happened with basically all the fascist dictators in the 30s. Who's to say that won't happen again?
    - time_management 18y ago
      I think the jury is still out on whether a corrupt elite cannot hijack a democratic system. I don't think the jury's out, so to speak. It can definitely happen, and I think US plutocracy is definitely corroding the democracy. Democracy is a complex system and needs a lot of safeguards; a constitution and an electoral process are only two of many necessary ingredients.
- defen 18y ago
  There's something to be said for being free of the fear of random street violence, or of having your stuff stolen.
- michaelkeenan 18y ago
  I used to believe that democracy was the best system. I believed in it as fervently and as automatically as a 16th century Spaniard might believe in Catholicism. Can you blame me? No-one in my society opposes democracy. No-one sane anyway. In the last couple of years, I've encountered well-reasoned opposing views for the first time. Is democracy a means to an end (good government), or an end in itself? If it's an end in itself, the argument is over. How tragic that good governance - a life-and-death-issue - is trumped by an ideal. If democracy is the means to good government, then it might be worth reconsidering our assumptions. Growing up good Catholics, oops I mean democratic citizens, we all know that opposing ideas such as despotism have irreparable problems and are the cause of most of the death and destruction in the world. Instead of giving up, let's try fixing those problems. Perhaps the situation has changed since people first started telling each other about the succession problems of despotism. Maybe technology can change the government industry, just as it has revolutionized so many other industries. So let's back up, and consider how to get an effective x, where x is a cup of coffee or a laptop or anything else. One way might be to get everyone to vote on what kind of x they like, and then give that to everyone. This is of course a terrible system, and not Starbucks nor Apple have that kind of system. Much better to have competition. I'd be terrible at making coffee or a laptop, and it's best that I'm not trusted to make those things, or to choose who would be good at making them. Nor ought I to be trusted with running a country or choosing who to run it. So, I think an ideal world might be a world of many smaller governments, each competing for consumers/citizens. Apply the creativity and efficiency of startups to the governing industry. I want a world of Singapores and Hong Kongs and Liechtensteins, where I can pick my government provider approximately the same way I pick my ISP or my employer. Of course there are problems. So solve them! What better decrepit, corrupt, monopolizing old industry to fix than the governing industry? A Peter Thiel-funded startup is trying (http://seasteading.org http://seasteading.org).
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Democracy is neither a means to an end, or an end in itself. It's a form of government. It's not an opinion. Perhaps you meant "My opinion about democracy: is it a means to an end for me or an end to itself" That would make more sense, but then you would not be talking about democracy, you'd be talking about your own opinion (which you're very well entitled to do) Democracy is just a closer representation of the natural legislature of the body politic than many other forms of government. In fact, true democracies are so close that Hobbesian Law usually takes place, which is why a representative republic is much more tasty than true democracy. BTW, there are no true democracies in the world today as far as I know. Thank goodness.
noonespecial 18y ago
It seems that democracy inevitably creeps towards totalitarianism, while totalitarianism creeps toward democracy. One wonders if theres not some optimized blend in the middle somewhere that we have yet to achieve, that could yield better results than either of the pure forms of the two alone.
mindslight 18y ago
Of course personal freedoms aren't required for a successful economy. The model for this is Singapore, where repression is highly selective. It is confined to those who take a conscious decision openly to challenge the authorities This sounds precisely where the US is headed, with watchlists and selective enforcement of laws. And of course those who are financially successful can spend their wealth to mitigate the lack of personal freedoms if they so desire. I'm sure Singaporeans can buy chewing gum at a premium just like Americans can buy marijuana.
jorgeortiz85 18y ago
Hogwash. Free market regimes that happen to be authoritarian have succeeded because of extrinsic reasons (international conditions), not intrinsic ones (the authoritarian model is fundamentally a better one than the democratic model). During the Cold War, democratic regimes that were not free market (or did not sufficiently recognize private property, specifically private property owned by former colonial powers (i.e., US and Europe)) were consistently harassed or even toppled by the dominant superpower (see Allende's Chile, Mossadegh's Iran). For the most part, those regimes that were toppled were replaced by authoritarian (but free market) regimes. In the last half of the 21st century, being a free market regime was both a necessary and a sufficient condition for survival, whereas being a democratic regime was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for survival. These two facts strongly encourage the success of authoritarian free market regimes. Why weren't there more democratic free market regimes during the Cold War? Well, they certainly existed in Western Europe, but the development story there is complicated by Europe's historically high levels of development (and the Marshall Plan). Why weren't there more democratic free market regimes in developing countries? Democracy is susceptible to populist acts. Much of the private property in developing countries was owned by former colonial powers. A democratic government would be very tempted to dabble in nationalism (and nationalization), risking external regime overthrow. If the West is puzzled by the success of Singapore and China, they should examine the history of their own foreign relations. The West gradually opened up to China as China gradually became more free market, despite the fact that China didn't (at all) open up politically. Had the conditions for Western engagement been political rather than economic, we might have seen a democratic (but perhaps not free market) China.
- jorgeortiz85 18y ago
  Afterthought: Will we see more democratic free market regimes now that the Cold War is over and the success of the free market approach is virtually undisputed? I think we have and are and will: in the many former Soviet republics that are eagerly embracing free markets (like Russia itself) and the EU (with its dicta of human rights and democracy).
- bokonist 18y ago
  Why weren't there more democratic free market regimes in developing countries? Democracy is susceptible to populist acts. Isn't that like saying democracy is susceptible to democracy? Let's use the word "market supportive" to describe governments that support and enable property rights and contract law ( the essence of a free market). How many countries became more "market supportive" as a democracy? Britain, the U.S., Germany, Austria, France, Canada, Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong - these countries all either developed their market oriented legal systems as authoritarian states or they inherited their system from a colonial ruler. I can think of numerous examples of democracies ( or failed attempts at democracy) moving in a less market supportive direction. Compare Britain 1884 ( the year of the Reform Act granting universal male suffrage ) to Britain 1950. Germany 1871 to Germany 1935. Russia under monarchy to Russia under the populist Bolshevik revolutionary government. Or Argentina in the first half of the 20th century to Argentina in the second half the century. France under any of the monarchies to France under any of the succeeding republics. India under the Raj to India post-Raj. Zimbabwe pre-universal suffrage, to Zimbabwe after universal suffrage. The only counter examples I can think of are the former Soviet republics. However, that is not really fair, since 1) it would be impossible to be more anti-property than the Soviet system and 2) the Soviet system arose as a result of a populist revolution. Ireland might be another example, though I haven't studied its history enough.
chaostheory 18y ago
Good: social order and a virtually non-existent crime rate Bad: virtually non-existent creativity / independent thought from the South China Morning Post: "married couples [in Singapore] turn up each year at a clinic for sexual problems with an unusual dilemma - they don't know how to have sex. 'There are probably many more who are keeping quiet because they are too embarrassed to come forward,' V. Atputharajah, the doctor who runs the centre, told the Straits Times... While there are no official figures on unconsummated marriages in the city-state, Dr Atputharajah estimated that one couple in 200 had the problem. Chong Yap Sent, an associate consultant at the National University Hospital, said the figure was probably twice to four times as high as that."
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Gosh, so many start-up opportunities. So little time.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]

12 points by mariorz 18y ago

I don't think this article is particularly good, but I've always wondered how people come to accept living without certain freedoms, so I found it interesting in this regard.

byrneseyeview 18y ago
For whatever reason, Singaporeans seem quite willing to discuss how strict their laws are, but Americans and Brits are not such big fans of wondering how Singapore can live with its absurdly low crime rate. https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=82856 https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=82856 This is incredible stuff: "Murder cases reported for the first half of the year declined to six in this city-state of 4.5 million people, compared to twelve cases reported for the same period in 2006. The Regional Security Officer (RSO) estimates the current number of murders at the end of 2007 to be approximately eight. All murder cases for the period have been solved. Reported incidents of rape increased for this period to 70 cases, compared to 53 cases during the same period in 2006. Motor vehicle theft and snatch theft incidents increased 25 percent during the first half of 2007. Housebreaking incidents for the first half of 2007 declined ten percent. The “outraging of Modesty,” a Singaporean crime pertaining to unwanted sexual touching, is reported to have increased a negligible amount." Twelve murders per year, in a city of 4.5 million people! New York City, a little over twice as big, is bragging that their murder rate is under 500 for the first time in decades. They are bragging that you are only 2000% more likely to get stabbed, strangled, shot or beaten to death in NYC than in Singapore. The fairest analogy is that Singapore is run the way a private business would run a nation-state. Private property maximizes the rent they can collect from their residents, but political freedom is pretty worthless. Google doesn't let users determine their search algorithm, and won't even bow down when they accidentally link to something reprehensible (Google "Jew", for example). If someone wants to switch, they can switch to Yahoo! It's instructive that it is so much cheaper to leave Singapore than to leave the US -- Singapore is a pretty small city, and there are plenty of other small, English-speaker-friendly places in the area. If the cost of switching governments got as low as the cost of switching search engines, you'd expect the quality of government to approach that of online search -- Singapore is a great example of what you get when you move along that continuum.
- mariorz 18y ago
  Thanks for the link and those stats are indeed incredible. It's worth pointing out, however, that low crime-rates and economic prosperity are not at all uncommon in dictatorships. Examples I'm familiar with include Porfirio Diaz in Mexico or more recently Pinochet in Chile. In those cases, though, there where no "free-market" forces at play as people could not easily move to other countries.
  - byrneseyeview 18y ago
    The Díaz thing surprises me. I was under the impression that Pinochet allowed free markets, but I thought Díaz expropriated a lot.
    - mariorz 18y ago
      I meant "free-market" in the sense of the cost of switching governments you mentioned. Switching governments was just not an option. Side note: Díaz probably did some expropriations but at least not the biggest ones. Those where done during Lazaro Cardenas´s presidency.
time_management 18y ago
The benefit of liberal democracy is that it prevents the corrupt and powerful few from acquiring the leverage to do great damage, allowing for technological and civil progress over the long haul. Well-run dictatorships can be prosperous in the short run, but the inexorable decay into rule by a corrupt elite will bankrupt a society. Once a madman or idiot gets into power, decades or centuries of progress will be erased. One benefit of liberal democracy is that it's much more robust, relying on laws and traditions rather than the people running it. Look at how much damage the Bush Administration has done to the US. Were it not for our liberal, democratic political traditions, they'd have caused 100 times more ruin by this point, and we wouldn't have a very good chance of being rid of them in Jan. 2009.
- mynameishere 18y ago
  One benefit of liberal democracy is that it's much more robust The normal trajectory is Louis i through xvi -> "Democracy" -> Napoleon. The kings that precede democracy are sometimes more stable that it itself... There are no large countries that are democracies that I'm aware of. If there were, they would get their Bonapartes or Bolsheviks as they always do.
- johnyzee 18y ago
  I think the jury is still out on whether a corrupt elite cannot hijack a democratic system. You got rid of "Bush" in '93 yet here he is again. More to the point, the powers behind the Bushes and probably any other candidate you get to choose from are still there - big money sponsors. And that doesn't even touch upon the other issue, that of the corrupt elite being put in place by the democratic system itself, as happened with basically all the fascist dictators in the 30s. Who's to say that won't happen again?
  - time_management 18y ago
    I think the jury is still out on whether a corrupt elite cannot hijack a democratic system. I don't think the jury's out, so to speak. It can definitely happen, and I think US plutocracy is definitely corroding the democracy. Democracy is a complex system and needs a lot of safeguards; a constitution and an electoral process are only two of many necessary ingredients.
defen 18y ago
There's something to be said for being free of the fear of random street violence, or of having your stuff stolen.
michaelkeenan 18y ago
I used to believe that democracy was the best system. I believed in it as fervently and as automatically as a 16th century Spaniard might believe in Catholicism. Can you blame me? No-one in my society opposes democracy. No-one sane anyway. In the last couple of years, I've encountered well-reasoned opposing views for the first time. Is democracy a means to an end (good government), or an end in itself? If it's an end in itself, the argument is over. How tragic that good governance - a life-and-death-issue - is trumped by an ideal. If democracy is the means to good government, then it might be worth reconsidering our assumptions. Growing up good Catholics, oops I mean democratic citizens, we all know that opposing ideas such as despotism have irreparable problems and are the cause of most of the death and destruction in the world. Instead of giving up, let's try fixing those problems. Perhaps the situation has changed since people first started telling each other about the succession problems of despotism. Maybe technology can change the government industry, just as it has revolutionized so many other industries. So let's back up, and consider how to get an effective x, where x is a cup of coffee or a laptop or anything else. One way might be to get everyone to vote on what kind of x they like, and then give that to everyone. This is of course a terrible system, and not Starbucks nor Apple have that kind of system. Much better to have competition. I'd be terrible at making coffee or a laptop, and it's best that I'm not trusted to make those things, or to choose who would be good at making them. Nor ought I to be trusted with running a country or choosing who to run it. So, I think an ideal world might be a world of many smaller governments, each competing for consumers/citizens. Apply the creativity and efficiency of startups to the governing industry. I want a world of Singapores and Hong Kongs and Liechtensteins, where I can pick my government provider approximately the same way I pick my ISP or my employer. Of course there are problems. So solve them! What better decrepit, corrupt, monopolizing old industry to fix than the governing industry? A Peter Thiel-funded startup is trying (http://seasteading.org http://seasteading.org).
- DanielBMarkham 18y ago
  Democracy is neither a means to an end, or an end in itself. It's a form of government. It's not an opinion. Perhaps you meant "My opinion about democracy: is it a means to an end for me or an end to itself" That would make more sense, but then you would not be talking about democracy, you'd be talking about your own opinion (which you're very well entitled to do) Democracy is just a closer representation of the natural legislature of the body politic than many other forms of government. In fact, true democracies are so close that Hobbesian Law usually takes place, which is why a representative republic is much more tasty than true democracy. BTW, there are no true democracies in the world today as far as I know. Thank goodness.

noonespecial 18y ago

It seems that democracy inevitably creeps towards totalitarianism, while totalitarianism creeps toward democracy. One wonders if theres not some optimized blend in the middle somewhere that we have yet to achieve, that could yield better results than either of the pure forms of the two alone.

mindslight 18y ago

Of course personal freedoms aren't required for a successful economy. The model for this is Singapore, where repression is highly selective. It is confined to those who take a conscious decision openly to challenge the authorities This sounds precisely where the US is headed, with watchlists and selective enforcement of laws. And of course those who are financially successful can spend their wealth to mitigate the lack of personal freedoms if they so desire. I'm sure Singaporeans can buy chewing gum at a premium just like Americans can buy marijuana.

jorgeortiz85 18y ago

Hogwash. Free market regimes that happen to be authoritarian have succeeded because of extrinsic reasons (international conditions), not intrinsic ones (the authoritarian model is fundamentally a better one than the democratic model). During the Cold War, democratic regimes that were not free market (or did not sufficiently recognize private property, specifically private property owned by former colonial powers (i.e., US and Europe)) were consistently harassed or even toppled by the dominant superpower (see Allende's Chile, Mossadegh's Iran). For the most part, those regimes that were toppled were replaced by authoritarian (but free market) regimes. In the last half of the 21st century, being a free market regime was both a necessary and a sufficient condition for survival, whereas being a democratic regime was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for survival. These two facts strongly encourage the success of authoritarian free market regimes. Why weren't there more democratic free market regimes during the Cold War? Well, they certainly existed in Western Europe, but the development story there is complicated by Europe's historically high levels of development (and the Marshall Plan). Why weren't there more democratic free market regimes in developing countries? Democracy is susceptible to populist acts. Much of the private property in developing countries was owned by former colonial powers. A democratic government would be very tempted to dabble in nationalism (and nationalization), risking external regime overthrow. If the West is puzzled by the success of Singapore and China, they should examine the history of their own foreign relations. The West gradually opened up to China as China gradually became more free market, despite the fact that China didn't (at all) open up politically. Had the conditions for Western engagement been political rather than economic, we might have seen a democratic (but perhaps not free market) China.

jorgeortiz85 18y ago
Afterthought: Will we see more democratic free market regimes now that the Cold War is over and the success of the free market approach is virtually undisputed? I think we have and are and will: in the many former Soviet republics that are eagerly embracing free markets (like Russia itself) and the EU (with its dicta of human rights and democracy).
bokonist 18y ago
Why weren't there more democratic free market regimes in developing countries? Democracy is susceptible to populist acts. Isn't that like saying democracy is susceptible to democracy? Let's use the word "market supportive" to describe governments that support and enable property rights and contract law ( the essence of a free market). How many countries became more "market supportive" as a democracy? Britain, the U.S., Germany, Austria, France, Canada, Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong - these countries all either developed their market oriented legal systems as authoritarian states or they inherited their system from a colonial ruler. I can think of numerous examples of democracies ( or failed attempts at democracy) moving in a less market supportive direction. Compare Britain 1884 ( the year of the Reform Act granting universal male suffrage ) to Britain 1950. Germany 1871 to Germany 1935. Russia under monarchy to Russia under the populist Bolshevik revolutionary government. Or Argentina in the first half of the 20th century to Argentina in the second half the century. France under any of the monarchies to France under any of the succeeding republics. India under the Raj to India post-Raj. Zimbabwe pre-universal suffrage, to Zimbabwe after universal suffrage. The only counter examples I can think of are the former Soviet republics. However, that is not really fair, since 1) it would be impossible to be more anti-property than the Soviet system and 2) the Soviet system arose as a result of a populist revolution. Ireland might be another example, though I haven't studied its history enough.

chaostheory 18y ago

Good: social order and a virtually non-existent crime rate Bad: virtually non-existent creativity / independent thought from the South China Morning Post: "married couples [in Singapore] turn up each year at a clinic for sexual problems with an unusual dilemma - they don't know how to have sex. 'There are probably many more who are keeping quiet because they are too embarrassed to come forward,' V. Atputharajah, the doctor who runs the centre, told the Straits Times... While there are no official figures on unconsummated marriages in the city-state, Dr Atputharajah estimated that one couple in 200 had the problem. Chong Yap Sent, an associate consultant at the National University Hospital, said the figure was probably twice to four times as high as that."

DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Gosh, so many start-up opportunities. So little time.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]