6 ms·

It’s probably important to note that all public housing in Singapore, where ~80% of Singaporeans live, have two cameras in each lift and a couple others pointin

by lgvln 3y ago

It’s probably important to note that all public housing in Singapore, where ~80% of Singaporeans live, have two cameras in each lift and a couple others pointing at the entry points to the lift and staircases, all connected to the police department, “for their safety” of course.

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
It is also 'probably important to note' that Singapore is the safest 700 km² on this planet. One is ridiculously unlikely to get robbed, raped, catcalled at, threatened with a gun or other weapon, step on used hypodermic needles, or encounter a variety of unsavoury activities that one would otherwise see in pretty much every other world city (except maybe Tokyo and Seoul—see a pattern?). It's also not like these cameras are pointing into private dwellings—this is illegal.
- mdp2021 3y ago
  > is the safest Please specify the source. Evaluations vary.
Grimburger 3y ago
> “for their safety” of course. Where do you suggest is a safer place to live?
- mdp2021 3y ago
  Check the Economist Intelligence Unit at https://safecities.economist.com/safe-cities-2021-whitepaper/ https://safecities.economist.com/safe-cities-2021-whitepaper... Personal security («crime, violence, terrorist threats, natural disasters and economic vulnerabilities»), 2021: > 1 Copenhagen; 2 Amsterdam; 3 Frankfurt; 4 Stockholm; 5 Brussels; 6 Paris; 7 Wellington; 8 Toronto; 9 Lisbon; 10 Madrid; 11 Sydney; 12 Barcelona; 13 Singapore; 14 London; 15 Zurich; 16 Tokyo; 17 Osaka; 18 Melbourne; 19 Taipei; 20 Santiago Other lists will be available. This one list is odd, because Singapore ranks in the top five for other measures related to security, but is ranked in the second of four quadrants for personal security, "second" to cities with presumably very different policies.
  - delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
    I'm sorry, but that list is very inaccurate (even if it is by The Economist—what are they smoking?). Singapore, below Paris? Below Barcelona, and below Frankfurt? Within two hours of setting foot in Paris, I nearly got my passport and 1400+€ stolen. I've lived 26 years in Singapore, and I have seen nothing of the sort. I left my phone in a hawker centre, and it was still there when I came to retrieve it, several hours later.
    - mdp2021 3y ago
      Yes I also found it quite odd. Those list make me wish data were expressed outside aggregates, in forms that quantitatively specify proper odds, and qualitatively display reasons that justify data. It is again like being shown dumb aggregates. Check the post from Gmerc nearby - the notes about London about apparent unorderly behaviour and similar amount of monitoring -, and London being ranked near Singapore. Of Barcelona, somebody on these pages (as I remember) posted about criminals cutting tyres of cars at semaphores to rob the driver. Others swear it is one of the safest places in the world. Official USA (as I remember) indications for travellers talk about a hive of scammers and petty thieves. This makes one wish for proper stats indicating rates of events, and reasoned data.
    - gmerc 3y ago
      Reminder: Just before the Pandemic, the US got the #1 ranking on pandemic preparedness while most of Asia including Singapore got trashed. Rankings are for profit endeavors that sell people metrics they can use to justify their policies or actions. Like best employer. The economist specifically has an almost comical beef with Singapore that draws derision in Asia year after year. Colonial Butthurt. Frankfurt over Singapore. Lol
  - throw4837244 3y ago
    I've been to most of these cities and it surprises me the Asian ones aren't higher up. I absolutely felt safer in Singapore and Tokyo than Toronto. I'm also surprised Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen aren't on the top 10.
gmerc 3y ago
I can leave my iPhone on the table in a food center to “chope a spot” Not yet seen the drawbacks of the cameras - certainly prefer the situation to SF where leaving your bluetooth enabled notebook in a car trunk is “asking for it” I can leave my door unlocked, my parcel can be dropped off at my porch without porch bandits (lol) and car theft is non existent. One can jog at 2am in any park at night wearing an expensive phone and earbuds and feel perfectly safe. There’s no active shooter drills in schools, no need to clutch your handbag for it to not be snatched away by an errant bike, no drug zombies inhabiting specific areas of town. We go have dinner in the red lights district because food is great there and can leave the car unlocked. There is no “no-go” zones or ghettos. No harassment on the subway apart from the occasional phone creep who invariably gets arrested. So pray please, why is safety in quotation marks? Singapore absolutely delivers value for the tradeoff of cameras in practical, real world fashion and people absolutely understand that - so selling them abstract concepts like “real western freedom” falls short because they see the tradeoffs in every other country when they travel. My son lost it at 7 years of age when we went to London and he experienced the authentic subway with belligerent drunks, homeless sleeping on the ground and shouting sports fans accosting a woman all in one ride - all things he’d never seen before. Rich Americans pay for this “freedom” by their gated communities, Lake Tahoe retreats and corporate modes of transportation. In Singapore, every resident gets it. Having lived here for a while, it stuns me how reflexive and ideological the conversation is about these tradeoffs and how misguided people’s perceptions are. Most think Singapore is a Capitalist wonderland, not seeing the housing market is centrally run, the majority of locals working for the government in one form or another (GIC/Temasek Crown Companies/PSD) Singapore defies western ideological expectations, it’s not neatly divided into left and right, capitalist vs socialist, western vs eastern societies, it’s 35% immigrants, 4 major races and religions, it controls racial composition of housing blocks and the nuance required to understand the country and the outcomes it produces, for better or worse is lost in the desperate attempts to make it fit into those narrow definitions. It’s not a paradise, it’s not an utopia, there’s crime, there’s scams, there’s human vice, it’s election districts are more like Alberta or Bavaria or Texas but it does have safety and safe housing for every resident in a way no other country has and without the immediate tradeoffs western narratives are so hard on. Sure heroin trafficking gets you killed, but on the backdrop of the Opium wars or the US drug crisis, their strategy, whether killing or not is key to that, actually works in measurable outcomes for everyone. It’s been, well forever, since an addict stole a thing from me - a regular occurrence in SF id you visit into a few times a year. It’s western perspectives that try to “frame that” - it’s clear this strategy isn’t gonna work for the US. But that doesn’t stop either side of the western debate from framing Singapore within their ideology, a kind of constant colonial mansplaining you get here - condescending explanations and quotation marks aiming to reassure Western audiences that their societies tradeoffs are the right ones. Questions not asked by the very people who should: - “Why don’t the cameras work in London?” - “Why does gun control work for every developed country but the US?” - “How did these guys pull of country level SSO that works” - “How were they able to switch to remote work and learning without as much as a hitch” - and my favorite.. “how do they manage world class public service, transportation and a government employing half a million people more or less directly with a progressive tax rate where most people pay lower single digit percent and the top end is not even 25%”) all deserve to be examined holistically for the nuanced, multi-layered background of those policies executed by what I would consider the worlds most professional public service. But especially for former colonial powers, this is really really tough and so escapism in form of slogans like “authoritarian” and “it’s just a city” are paraded 59 avoid them. Reading the western coverage always reads like Singapore’s mere existence and choices are an affront to the the west because they point out that ideology had limits. But Singapore doesn’t exist to prove hard on drug crusaders or believers in technocracy or authoritarian government right - it exists purely out of its own right and the sheer will of Lee Kwan Yew to think outside the box, to not accept prevailing narratives and choose the right solutions for the unique location and situation rather than the east ones.
lgvln 3y ago
Update: There are a number of comments with the equivalent of “name me a safer country”. It is undeniable that Singapore is one of the safest country in the world. The issue here is there needs to be a balance between safety and other aspects that constitutes a good life. You’re most likely the safest if you lock yourself at home your entire life - but that’s no way to live. Such surveillance is unnecessary/excessive (Singapore has had an extremely low crime rate) and intrusive. It infringes on one’s civil and political liberties (not that the law affords Singaporeans much), which are necessary to a good life. [0] My comment is a reminder that underneath all that color, is an oppressive one-party authoritarian (police?) state. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights#States_which_are_neither_signatories_nor_parties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civi...
- gmerc 3y ago
  What a bizarre comment again. Police State? What are you smoking? Do yourself a favor and check when the last person was choked to death, beaten to death by police over here, how many police shootings we have per capita, how many people have their property taken by police at traffic stops, what our imprisoned population ratio is, and how many policemen and three letter agencies we have to oppress us. Find us instances where our President or Prime Minister openly fabulate about shooting protesters, cheers about kids with assault rifles doing it for him? Continue to research if police in Singapore can claim qualified immunity, whether we have a thin blue line here, whether minorities have to fear police in Singapore. Please go on, educate us how we are oppressed and cannot have a good life as a result. Tell us how the police in Singapore is feared by a large percentage of the population because skin color means potentially getting shot through the windshield. Maybe find some cases of systemic police violence that have gone unpunished in our country? (Did you know public servants, including police get their punishment doubled on conviction because, shockingly, they are held to a higher standard here rather than receiving immunity and protection). By all means, educate us on the last time a Singapore SWAT team accidentally shot someone in their bed, or in fact a single case of successful murder by Police/Swatting here. Or the last time police leadership covered up for a serial killer or rapist in uniform, we are burning to hear your insights into that. We actually, by a large margin, like our police force here. Many of them are kids doing their national service. Oh I get it, these things are not oppression, the Economist has a statistic somewhere that they are the price of freedom. What is it with people who feel compelled to post “just reminders” that Singapore is definitely not a pure western democracy like Texas or Alberta or Bavaria who have true one party rule on the same population scale on random threads about … checks … the color palette of Singapore? Is it fragility? The inability to accept that there are places in the world that are comparatively thriving compared to the West? Further Reading: https://thekopi.co/2020/06/12/how-did-singapore-avoid-the-police-brutality-trap-a-story-of-nsfs-and-npcs/amp/ https://thekopi.co/2020/06/12/how-did-singapore-avoid-the-po...

by lgvln 3y ago

delta_p_delta_x 3y ago

It is also 'probably important to note' that Singapore is the safest 700 km² on this planet. One is ridiculously unlikely to get robbed, raped, catcalled at, threatened with a gun or other weapon, step on used hypodermic needles, or encounter a variety of unsavoury activities that one would otherwise see in pretty much every other world city (except maybe Tokyo and Seoul—see a pattern?). It's also not like these cameras are pointing into private dwellings—this is illegal.

mdp2021 3y ago
> is the safest Please specify the source. Evaluations vary.

Grimburger 3y ago

> “for their safety” of course. Where do you suggest is a safer place to live?

mdp2021 3y ago
Check the Economist Intelligence Unit at https://safecities.economist.com/safe-cities-2021-whitepaper/ https://safecities.economist.com/safe-cities-2021-whitepaper... Personal security («crime, violence, terrorist threats, natural disasters and economic vulnerabilities»), 2021: > 1 Copenhagen; 2 Amsterdam; 3 Frankfurt; 4 Stockholm; 5 Brussels; 6 Paris; 7 Wellington; 8 Toronto; 9 Lisbon; 10 Madrid; 11 Sydney; 12 Barcelona; 13 Singapore; 14 London; 15 Zurich; 16 Tokyo; 17 Osaka; 18 Melbourne; 19 Taipei; 20 Santiago Other lists will be available. This one list is odd, because Singapore ranks in the top five for other measures related to security, but is ranked in the second of four quadrants for personal security, "second" to cities with presumably very different policies.
- delta_p_delta_x 3y ago
  I'm sorry, but that list is very inaccurate (even if it is by The Economist—what are they smoking?). Singapore, below Paris? Below Barcelona, and below Frankfurt? Within two hours of setting foot in Paris, I nearly got my passport and 1400+€ stolen. I've lived 26 years in Singapore, and I have seen nothing of the sort. I left my phone in a hawker centre, and it was still there when I came to retrieve it, several hours later.
  - mdp2021 3y ago
    Yes I also found it quite odd. Those list make me wish data were expressed outside aggregates, in forms that quantitatively specify proper odds, and qualitatively display reasons that justify data. It is again like being shown dumb aggregates. Check the post from Gmerc nearby - the notes about London about apparent unorderly behaviour and similar amount of monitoring -, and London being ranked near Singapore. Of Barcelona, somebody on these pages (as I remember) posted about criminals cutting tyres of cars at semaphores to rob the driver. Others swear it is one of the safest places in the world. Official USA (as I remember) indications for travellers talk about a hive of scammers and petty thieves. This makes one wish for proper stats indicating rates of events, and reasoned data.
  - gmerc 3y ago
    Reminder: Just before the Pandemic, the US got the #1 ranking on pandemic preparedness while most of Asia including Singapore got trashed. Rankings are for profit endeavors that sell people metrics they can use to justify their policies or actions. Like best employer. The economist specifically has an almost comical beef with Singapore that draws derision in Asia year after year. Colonial Butthurt. Frankfurt over Singapore. Lol
- throw4837244 3y ago
  I've been to most of these cities and it surprises me the Asian ones aren't higher up. I absolutely felt safer in Singapore and Tokyo than Toronto. I'm also surprised Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen aren't on the top 10.

gmerc 3y ago

I can leave my iPhone on the table in a food center to “chope a spot” Not yet seen the drawbacks of the cameras - certainly prefer the situation to SF where leaving your bluetooth enabled notebook in a car trunk is “asking for it” I can leave my door unlocked, my parcel can be dropped off at my porch without porch bandits (lol) and car theft is non existent. One can jog at 2am in any park at night wearing an expensive phone and earbuds and feel perfectly safe. There’s no active shooter drills in schools, no need to clutch your handbag for it to not be snatched away by an errant bike, no drug zombies inhabiting specific areas of town. We go have dinner in the red lights district because food is great there and can leave the car unlocked. There is no “no-go” zones or ghettos. No harassment on the subway apart from the occasional phone creep who invariably gets arrested. So pray please, why is safety in quotation marks? Singapore absolutely delivers value for the tradeoff of cameras in practical, real world fashion and people absolutely understand that - so selling them abstract concepts like “real western freedom” falls short because they see the tradeoffs in every other country when they travel. My son lost it at 7 years of age when we went to London and he experienced the authentic subway with belligerent drunks, homeless sleeping on the ground and shouting sports fans accosting a woman all in one ride - all things he’d never seen before. Rich Americans pay for this “freedom” by their gated communities, Lake Tahoe retreats and corporate modes of transportation. In Singapore, every resident gets it. Having lived here for a while, it stuns me how reflexive and ideological the conversation is about these tradeoffs and how misguided people’s perceptions are. Most think Singapore is a Capitalist wonderland, not seeing the housing market is centrally run, the majority of locals working for the government in one form or another (GIC/Temasek Crown Companies/PSD) Singapore defies western ideological expectations, it’s not neatly divided into left and right, capitalist vs socialist, western vs eastern societies, it’s 35% immigrants, 4 major races and religions, it controls racial composition of housing blocks and the nuance required to understand the country and the outcomes it produces, for better or worse is lost in the desperate attempts to make it fit into those narrow definitions. It’s not a paradise, it’s not an utopia, there’s crime, there’s scams, there’s human vice, it’s election districts are more like Alberta or Bavaria or Texas but it does have safety and safe housing for every resident in a way no other country has and without the immediate tradeoffs western narratives are so hard on. Sure heroin trafficking gets you killed, but on the backdrop of the Opium wars or the US drug crisis, their strategy, whether killing or not is key to that, actually works in measurable outcomes for everyone. It’s been, well forever, since an addict stole a thing from me - a regular occurrence in SF id you visit into a few times a year. It’s western perspectives that try to “frame that” - it’s clear this strategy isn’t gonna work for the US. But that doesn’t stop either side of the western debate from framing Singapore within their ideology, a kind of constant colonial mansplaining you get here - condescending explanations and quotation marks aiming to reassure Western audiences that their societies tradeoffs are the right ones. Questions not asked by the very people who should: - “Why don’t the cameras work in London?” - “Why does gun control work for every developed country but the US?” - “How did these guys pull of country level SSO that works” - “How were they able to switch to remote work and learning without as much as a hitch” - and my favorite.. “how do they manage world class public service, transportation and a government employing half a million people more or less directly with a progressive tax rate where most people pay lower single digit percent and the top end is not even 25%”) all deserve to be examined holistically for the nuanced, multi-layered background of those policies executed by what I would consider the worlds most professional public service. But especially for former colonial powers, this is really really tough and so escapism in form of slogans like “authoritarian” and “it’s just a city” are paraded 59 avoid them. Reading the western coverage always reads like Singapore’s mere existence and choices are an affront to the the west because they point out that ideology had limits. But Singapore doesn’t exist to prove hard on drug crusaders or believers in technocracy or authoritarian government right - it exists purely out of its own right and the sheer will of Lee Kwan Yew to think outside the box, to not accept prevailing narratives and choose the right solutions for the unique location and situation rather than the east ones.

lgvln 3y ago

Update: There are a number of comments with the equivalent of “name me a safer country”. It is undeniable that Singapore is one of the safest country in the world. The issue here is there needs to be a balance between safety and other aspects that constitutes a good life. You’re most likely the safest if you lock yourself at home your entire life - but that’s no way to live. Such surveillance is unnecessary/excessive (Singapore has had an extremely low crime rate) and intrusive. It infringes on one’s civil and political liberties (not that the law affords Singaporeans much), which are necessary to a good life. [0] My comment is a reminder that underneath all that color, is an oppressive one-party authoritarian (police?) state. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights#States_which_are_neither_signatories_nor_parties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civi...

gmerc 3y ago
What a bizarre comment again. Police State? What are you smoking? Do yourself a favor and check when the last person was choked to death, beaten to death by police over here, how many police shootings we have per capita, how many people have their property taken by police at traffic stops, what our imprisoned population ratio is, and how many policemen and three letter agencies we have to oppress us. Find us instances where our President or Prime Minister openly fabulate about shooting protesters, cheers about kids with assault rifles doing it for him? Continue to research if police in Singapore can claim qualified immunity, whether we have a thin blue line here, whether minorities have to fear police in Singapore. Please go on, educate us how we are oppressed and cannot have a good life as a result. Tell us how the police in Singapore is feared by a large percentage of the population because skin color means potentially getting shot through the windshield. Maybe find some cases of systemic police violence that have gone unpunished in our country? (Did you know public servants, including police get their punishment doubled on conviction because, shockingly, they are held to a higher standard here rather than receiving immunity and protection). By all means, educate us on the last time a Singapore SWAT team accidentally shot someone in their bed, or in fact a single case of successful murder by Police/Swatting here. Or the last time police leadership covered up for a serial killer or rapist in uniform, we are burning to hear your insights into that. We actually, by a large margin, like our police force here. Many of them are kids doing their national service. Oh I get it, these things are not oppression, the Economist has a statistic somewhere that they are the price of freedom. What is it with people who feel compelled to post “just reminders” that Singapore is definitely not a pure western democracy like Texas or Alberta or Bavaria who have true one party rule on the same population scale on random threads about … checks … the color palette of Singapore? Is it fragility? The inability to accept that there are places in the world that are comparatively thriving compared to the West? Further Reading: https://thekopi.co/2020/06/12/how-did-singapore-avoid-the-police-brutality-trap-a-story-of-nsfs-and-npcs/amp/ https://thekopi.co/2020/06/12/how-did-singapore-avoid-the-po...