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> Everything works, it’s very efficient, public transit and internet is good and it’s extremely safe. It also has great food and has low taxes. Most Western cou

by rayiner 9mo ago

> Everything works, it’s very efficient, public transit and internet is good and it’s extremely safe. It also has great food and has low taxes. Most Western countries just can’t compete… Why do you think New York or Chicago isn’t like this? What could western countries change?

acrooks 9mo ago
This is obviously oversimplified but I think this is a big factor: Singapore is a business masquerading as a country. While it is technically democratic, in practice there are some barriers preventing truly free and fair elections. That being said, the leaders in Singapore are not corrupt and truly do focus on what's best for the country. As a result decisions are made quickly, for the greater good, and are not politically driven. The leadership have the latitude to make decisions that they believe will make the country better. Sometimes these decisions don't have a lot of public support (because people are naturally more short-sighted) but, because of the political system, they don't need to rely on public support. In the case of Singapore, I think this dynamic has led to a compounding effect of good decisions that have put the country in such a strong place today. You see this similarly with Norway's oil fund; it was likely unpopular initially to reinvest so much money into savings, but today it's paying off where they have a $2T savings account, from which they can withdraw up to 3% annually ($60B) for the needs of Norway.
- TremendousJudge 9mo ago
  > Singapore is a business masquerading as a country I don't see why this would lead the country to being well organized. All the big businesses I've seen are very inefficient and disorganized internally, where decisions are made slowly, mostly to benefit the decisionmaker's little princedom inside the company.
- rayiner 9mo ago
  > That being said, the leaders in Singapore are not corrupt and truly do focus on what's best for the country. As a result decisions are made quickly, for the greater good, and are not politically driven. But what makes them act this way, lol? That's what every country wants out of its leaders. Why is Singapore able to do it? I know that's a hard question to answer...
shell0x 9mo ago
I think it’s a mix of valuing education more, a strict enforcement of the law with severe punishment, a small area to maintain, electing educated politicians and demographics. Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. Markham in Canada for example has a much lower violent crime rate than most of the Canada and is predominantly Chinese.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
  > Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. Wealthy Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. If you go to a country with less law and order (like PNG), you’ll see more violence. America and other countries had a spike of Vietnamese, Hmong, and Chinese gangs in the 80s/90s due to a refugee influx from Vietnam. Turns out a forcibly relocated, non-wealthy population who has to readjust to live in a new country is going to have issues, even if they are Asian.
  - rayiner 9mo ago
    The correlation between per-capita GDP and homicide rate is fairly weak, and if you graph it and color-code it you can clearly see that asian countries tend to have lower homicide rate at similar income levels: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc?yScale=log https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc?y... Countries like Bangladesh have fewer homicides than Canada, and less than twice as many as the U.K. or Sweden, while much richer Latin American countries have 5-20 times as many.
HDThoreaun 9mo ago
Chicagos biggest problems are corruption and special interests. Corruption means that labor has become very expensive for the government and most civil servant leaders tend to be incompetent. The incentives created when being in leadership is not about competence led to an environment where very few in the government are interested in improving the systems they run and those that focus on improvement generally don’t rise to obtain more power. The power of special interests means that it is impossible to make quick decisions, even if they are obvious. Everything is a long, drawn out process, so the decisions that are made tend to be the ones that benefit people who can pay lobbyists. Singapore is pretty much a benevolent dictatorship. Their government makes quick, technocratic decisions that legitimately attempt to make society as a whole better in the long run. The short term popularity of these decisions is effectively irrelevant, which allows them to do things like employing slaves and being extremely tough on crime.

by rayiner 9mo ago

acrooks 9mo ago

This is obviously oversimplified but I think this is a big factor: Singapore is a business masquerading as a country. While it is technically democratic, in practice there are some barriers preventing truly free and fair elections. That being said, the leaders in Singapore are not corrupt and truly do focus on what's best for the country. As a result decisions are made quickly, for the greater good, and are not politically driven. The leadership have the latitude to make decisions that they believe will make the country better. Sometimes these decisions don't have a lot of public support (because people are naturally more short-sighted) but, because of the political system, they don't need to rely on public support. In the case of Singapore, I think this dynamic has led to a compounding effect of good decisions that have put the country in such a strong place today. You see this similarly with Norway's oil fund; it was likely unpopular initially to reinvest so much money into savings, but today it's paying off where they have a $2T savings account, from which they can withdraw up to 3% annually ($60B) for the needs of Norway.

TremendousJudge 9mo ago
> Singapore is a business masquerading as a country I don't see why this would lead the country to being well organized. All the big businesses I've seen are very inefficient and disorganized internally, where decisions are made slowly, mostly to benefit the decisionmaker's little princedom inside the company.
rayiner 9mo ago
> That being said, the leaders in Singapore are not corrupt and truly do focus on what's best for the country. As a result decisions are made quickly, for the greater good, and are not politically driven. But what makes them act this way, lol? That's what every country wants out of its leaders. Why is Singapore able to do it? I know that's a hard question to answer...

shell0x 9mo ago

I think it’s a mix of valuing education more, a strict enforcement of the law with severe punishment, a small area to maintain, electing educated politicians and demographics. Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. Markham in Canada for example has a much lower violent crime rate than most of the Canada and is predominantly Chinese.

seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
> Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. Wealthy Asians tend to commit less violent crimes. If you go to a country with less law and order (like PNG), you’ll see more violence. America and other countries had a spike of Vietnamese, Hmong, and Chinese gangs in the 80s/90s due to a refugee influx from Vietnam. Turns out a forcibly relocated, non-wealthy population who has to readjust to live in a new country is going to have issues, even if they are Asian.
- rayiner 9mo ago
  The correlation between per-capita GDP and homicide rate is fairly weak, and if you graph it and color-code it you can clearly see that asian countries tend to have lower homicide rate at similar income levels: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc?yScale=log https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc?y... Countries like Bangladesh have fewer homicides than Canada, and less than twice as many as the U.K. or Sweden, while much richer Latin American countries have 5-20 times as many.

HDThoreaun 9mo ago

Chicagos biggest problems are corruption and special interests. Corruption means that labor has become very expensive for the government and most civil servant leaders tend to be incompetent. The incentives created when being in leadership is not about competence led to an environment where very few in the government are interested in improving the systems they run and those that focus on improvement generally don’t rise to obtain more power. The power of special interests means that it is impossible to make quick decisions, even if they are obvious. Everything is a long, drawn out process, so the decisions that are made tend to be the ones that benefit people who can pay lobbyists. Singapore is pretty much a benevolent dictatorship. Their government makes quick, technocratic decisions that legitimately attempt to make society as a whole better in the long run. The short term popularity of these decisions is effectively irrelevant, which allows them to do things like employing slaves and being extremely tough on crime.