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Seriously, you guys are getting tiring. If it's so important, Thailand's a 1 hour flight away, Malaysia a short bus ride, Indonesia a short ferry. By the way, w

• sheepmullet 11y ago
  "Seriously, you guys are getting tiring." I think he points out a very real issue. There is a massive cultural difference between SF and Singapore. Most of the developers I know in the Bay Area would never even consider moving to a red state.
  • crdb 11y ago
    I take issue to his stereotypes, which are trotted out regularly upon the merest mention of the word Singapore. I mean, "hung for smoking a spliff", really? The chewing gum ban was an attempt at restricting the supply after kids got into a fashion of blocking the subway's doors using it, particularly painful in a country where millions use it every day. The solution was the least obtrusive way round the problem (you can't go arrest kids systematically...); it's perfectly legal to chew it, you just have to import your own stock. Then you realize that you don't care enough to bother, and you stop chewing, and you wonder why every bloody article ever written about Singapore on any unrelated topic has to include the "factoid". Sometimes I think it was a very clever press troll by LKY. Or take the caning of that American kid: caning for damaging a few cars? Sure, but a car in the US costs a few grand; in Singapore, it can cost more than a house and take half a lifetime to pay for (this, incidentally, is about passing on the cost of thrashing the commons to those who do the thrashing - a "liberal" policy never even discussed in the US). If somebody went and torched 10 houses in a street, what magnitude punishment would the US justice system reserve him? As for dancing on tables, my first week in Singapore, not only did the bar I visited for what I thought would be a quiet beer - in Somerset, not Geylang - have paid models to dance on tables, they invited customers to take shots off their body. Not my thing but it's there if you want it. I guess I'm not yet used to the constant stereotyping, so feel the need to speak for the other side. People don't go around generalizing Texans as Christian extremists who eat 5 big macs a meal whilst hunting deer with a machine gun from the back of their Ford pickup (FWIW I know Texans who are/did all of these things); somehow the same level of stereotyping with Singapore is acceptable, and people think a few hours stopover once in a while is enough to qualify their opinion.
    • sheepmullet 11y ago
      "People don't go around generalizing Texans..." Yes they do. All the time. Like I said most of my friends from the Bay Area would never work in Texas.
      • SamReidHughes 11y ago
        Honestly it's because of the weather more than anything.
      • beatpanda 11y ago
        Forgive me if I would like my kids to learn about Cesar Chavez in history class.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • crdb 11y ago
    Upon further thought, this is the issue I have with similar posts as the OP's comment: Imagine you're an entrepreneur in Austin, TX. Every time you write a press release, post on HN or otherwise mention Austin, someone immediately comes up and talks about how Texas has such strange politicians, that Rick Perry is corrupt and hates the environment, that the Church of X or Y has done something bad, that rednecks this or that, that there's no state tax, welfare is bad, regulation too lax, gun laws scary, Texans too fat etc. and the original topic never gets discussed because the conversation ALWAYS, systematically, diverts upon criticism of Texas and its defenders' attempts at correcting it. Maybe it's selection bias, maybe I'm more sensitive to Singapore threads because I live there and have to endure these stereotypes all the time from family, friends and foreign communities, but it really feels that way sometimes. Singapore brings up a lot of really interesting discussion points, as an experiment in a lot of dimensions from the COE which limits car ownership to put a price on damaging the commons, from their Worker Pass to legalize no-minimum-wage work from anyone in the world, from their "city as a garden" policy, their extraordinary racial integration, their water policy, or more meta, the way LKY pulled a third world country with strong communist undercurrents into the first world in a generation, or how he fought Mao's agents... or this thread, which was originally about the developing startup hub, written by one of the government's own VCs (an interesting question to ask them is what % of their portfolio by value is in Singapore).
  • coldtea 11y ago
    They've probably never been to Singapore, and are stereotyping to begin with. Singapore is nothing like a red state.
    • sheepmullet 11y ago
      My point is that Singaporean culture is very different to Bay Area culture.
    • scurvy 11y ago
      You're right, red states have less censorship. The Economist ranked Singapore as having more censorship than China. In another study it was 133rd out of all countries.
• nbevans 11y ago
  I didn't get the drug angle either. Most countries of the world are harsh on drugs. Even in Thailand or Indonesia, I do believe, if the corrupt police desire to, they can throw the book at you for smoking something they deem on that occasion to be illegal. If you are living somewhere not as a citizen then you really ought to steer clear of drugs as there will not be a legal catch-net for you like you might be used to in your homeland. SG government is second to none. But it is too young to say whether or not SG has found a political model that will last for centuries. I doubt it. They are just lucky that so far, the Lee family, have been incredibly upstanding honest people. So long as the Lee family stays as strong and decent as it has then hopefully that will not change. SG has big fines for most things, especially apparent on their MRT metro. But look at the fine signage in any world metro system and you'll realise SG is barely any different. Yes, you cannot take ghastly smelling Durian fruit on the metro here or you face a steep fine. That's because it smells awful. If you actually tried to do it I doubt you'd even get past the MRT ticket barriers before an attendant stopped you and told you if you continued you'd be breaking the law. The actual fine is just a shock tactic more than anything. Chewing gum... well good luck trying to buy any in SG since the import is banned. So that just leaves tourists who bring a stockpile with them and deliberately don't surrender it at customs. I wish the UK banned chewing gum too as within the 5 years the street pavements would probably be all clean. Yes, so what, Singapore has cleanliness OCD which resulted in a chewing gum ban. So what? Why is that bad!?
  • crdb 11y ago
    Yeah, it can go two ways. Either it goes the way of the Venetian Republic, where the wealthy in power start regulating away the possibility of moving up and begin the process of corrupting the state; or LKY has succeeded in changing the fundamental culture of the country (e.g. everybody speaks English today thanks to him) to promote the rule of law and lack of corruption regardless of who runs the country. I'm scared of the first outcome, which is overwhelmingly the case historically. But the Singaporeans I know - particularly those in government, who are extremely idealistic about probity - make me think that the second is a possibility. We'll know in 40 years... As for drugs, I think there is no true rule of law in any other country in the region. At a previous company, we annoyed one of the ruling families of one of the countries mentioned in this thread, and found ourselves fined several hundred thousand dollars because the students we paid to hand out leaflets in the street - technically "manual labour" - were not wearing hard hats and work boots. Let's not mention a certain airport whose construction siphooned several billions into the pockets of a similar family. But by and large it's known that you can head off to Bali or Bangkok and get your fix. Personally, I don't really care as a non-user (although am pro-legalization as a matter of principle), there are more important things to worry about... like the rule of law.
• tomjen3 11y ago
  It is called Disneyland with the death penalty for a reason. Forget weed, can I drink a glass of wine in public?
  • gotrecruit 11y ago
    erm, actually yes i'm fairly confident we do not have such a thing as open container policy - there is no such rule that you cannot drink in public.
    • crdb 11y ago
      Technically, you can't, in Little India, during certain times, because of the riots recently. Cold Storage also says they can't sell booze between 10.30pm and 7am for the same reason. I suspect this will eventually go away again.
  • nbevans 11y ago
    Of course you can. Singapore isn't an Islamic state you know? It has some alcohol curfew laws yes. No public space drinking after 10pm. But in a bar which has tables/seats on the street; that's fine.
  • Gigablah 11y ago
    > It is called Disneyland with the death penalty If William Gibson is the only person you get your opinions from, sure.
  • tim333 11y ago
    Some legal casual drinking where I had a drink myself not long back: http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/straitstimes.com/files/ST_20130505_YLTHEFT05_3643580e.jpg http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/straitstimes.com/files/ST_...
• gotrecruit 11y ago
  you know, the points you made are fair and valid. however, i think what many people miss, or perhaps don't care about, is the philosophical differences between societal attitudes in the west, compared to singapore. singaporeans have a fear of authority deeply instilled into them, which has cascading effects like hindering creativity, i.e innovation. singaporeans have been trained to respect and obey authority through harsh deterrent punishments for non-compliance, and while i think it's actually a good thing because most people are idiots and would destroy the world accidentally if given the chance, it's not a good environment for startups. source: me, true blue singaporean born and raised
• scurvy 11y ago
  These were merely examples, not hard deal breakers. If I wrote in hypotheticals without examples, I would have been lampooned for not providing examples. My point was that freedoms in Singapore are dictated by the government and not inherent. If Temasek holdings, err I meant the SG gov, doesn't say that something is legal, you can bet that you'll get arrested for doing it. It's a much more controlling atmosphere than anything you'll find in Silicon Valley. Yes, you can live a very high quality of life as an expat with a family in SG. My brother does it and isn't going to be leaving anytime soon. However, he's merely stationed there at a large multinational corporation's request. The thought of starting his own company or joining a startup would probably kill him. He's not the startup type and most people who live in SG are not startup people. They like what SG offers them and in return they give up a lot of freedoms. Re day laborers not getting paid. Don't mistake freedoms with efficiency of law.
  • crdb 11y ago
    Freedoms are not "inherent". If you put humans in a desert, the strongest will eventually rule the weakest, and people will be unequal before the law. You certainly won't get "freedom" under any definition I know of the term. To be more specific, I define individual rights as encompassing the right to conduct any activity you wish so long as you do not infringe on other's rights (including the commons, which are occasionally left out of Western definitions and particularly well managed in Singapore). Rights require enforcement, so that the man with the biggest stick does not get to violate the rights of others. Every man equal before the law, a concept pioneered by the Magna Carta, refined by John Locke, and implemented most famously by the Founding Fathers of the United States (for the first time in the history of mankind, without compromise or exception). Most people, except for some libertarian anarchists, agree that this is the proper role of government, that it should have a monopoly on force for that reason. A people gets together and defines a set of rules to create a state and government that will enforce these individual rights at the exclusion of all other entities, with every man equal before the law. The government's purpose becomes the enforcement of individual rights, and its "freedom index" can be measured by both its efficiency in enforcing rights for all, and its degree of infringing rights. This is implemented via justice, which arbitrages disputes, the police, which enforces the decisions, and the army which protects citizen against external threats to rights infringment. The casus belli makes it necessary to infringe rights to a certain extent by confiscating property in order to finance enforcement, the extent of infringement depending on the expense required, with conscription being the most extreme and desperate measure. The early United States were pretty extremist about it, with no (national) Navy for almost a decade (and Jefferson being opposed to one permanently) until the Barbary pirates forced the government to raise what were initially one-off taxes to create what became a standing Navy in 1794. Even during WWII, the government preferred issuing war bonds than increasing taxes to finance the war effort. How does Singapore fit into this? The degree of rights infringement to which the government lends itself is always justified. Conscription? Well, both neighbours are or were hostile states and the region is not exactly a mainstay of political stability, but Singapore's enormous and well funded armed forces are a very powerful deterrent. Is it necessary today? That's a long debate which the Singaporeans are continuously having, with the conclusion so far being yes. The chewing gum ban? A pragmatic decision implemented as the lowest cost solution to damage being done to the private property of SMRT corporation and the annoyance of its millions of customers (who happen to be citizen). The tough penalties for drug trade? They stem from a long history of drug use in Asia creating significant costs for the commons be it in increased crime or in broken populations, we're not talking about Valley developers enjoying a spliff in their basement whilst watching the latest Silicon Valley, we're talking opium addicts in Clarke Quay overlooking the brackish waters of the Singapore River then famous for its stink. The freedom of speech restrictions? They fit in basically two categories: national safety (such as those making racist speech illegal, preserving the country from flashpoints such as the 1964 riots), and libel. On the latter, the world is a big place and Singapore is small; if there was value in the libel suits (such as the recent CPF debate), why wasn't the information released abroad? The foreign media loves a Singapore-critical story and would have a field day giving PR to any valid criticism. Libel exists for a reason, which is that real damage is caused by unfounded rumors (see aforementioned Herman Cain campaign last primary), and citizen and entities ought to legally be able to protect themselves against such damage, which they aren't in many Western countries where well placed campaigns can rapidly destroy someone without much consequence for the rumor spreader. Citizen being exiled? All the ones I had a look at were openly communist or had ties to communists; in the 1960s, those were effectively enemy agents in a state of war, Mao's teams set off thousands of bombs in neighbouring Hong Kong and Suharto's way of dealing with the "problem" in Indonesia was to slaughter over half a million people with suspected ties to the PKI; let's not even talk about Latin America and things like Condor. I think exile is a comparatively much more acceptable way to deal with such opposition than systematic murder, and this is a credit to LKY's management of such crises. Where Singapore shines, in an almost unique way globally (Switzerland might fit to an extent) is in the degree to which it does not impede the freedom to trade. I think the most important part of that today is the freedom of movement and doing business with foreigners, via the visa policy and lack of minimum wage. Friedman thought minimum wage would increase unemployment, but its real effect in the United States was to push around 11 million workers into illegality (80% of unskilled workers), and thus severe curtailment of their rights (when you are scared of La Migra, you do not go to the police). Singapore considers foreign citizen as guests, with rights granted on an increasing basis depending on salary. It's a visionary policy which is rarely commented upon because immigration is a loaded subject, because the real topic of immigration is one of cultural and racial replacement as immigrants settle down and change the makeup of your population (imagine if say, Sweden opened its door to a million new immigrants a year today). It takes enormous courage to formulate policies that effectively allow for large changes in the cultural makeup of your electorate and I can't think of any other country that does it to the same extent (perhaps Australia, where about a quarter of the population is first or second gen foreign if I recall well; and of course the United States right up to the mid-20th century). So most countries restrict the right of citizen to trade labour with foreign citizen, and freedom of movement across their borders. Singapore doesn't, or not much. Then you look at restrictions on consumption. Guns are not banned, they are merely very expensive to own - a permit for a non NS-man involves a $3k/year membership to a gun club. In the United States, real estate is plenty and the police cannot expect to be the first line of defence everywhere, so, particularly in states like Alaska (where a bear might be waiting on your driveway) and the rural states (to the bewilderment of city dwellers in California) guns become an important right to citizen. In Singapore, which is almost 100% high density housing and has an exceptionally efficient police force, this is not an issue. Cars are also expensive to own, to curtail the damage to the commons (roads, and air quality) that comes with high car ownership. A quick trip to Hong Kong (or, for that matter, London) and you rapidly understand why this was implemented. A last, and very important point if we're comparing to the United States is the government's approach to business competition. Temasek and GIC are big investors in Singtel, yet they allowed and encouraged many competitors to develop; I am most familiar with the team from MyRepublic whose growth has been spectacular and whose founding was determined by the extremely low CAC for telecom in the country. In France, Xavier Niel fought tooth and nail to have the permission to run a telephone network against the existing oligopoly which had many powerful friends in government. In the UK, Virgin was the first company to successfully fight the BA-led legacy airline oligopoly; BA went as far as offering free flights "as a national service" to MPs and it was only Virgin's diversification which gave it the reserves and time to beat BA's long price war. In the United States, in contrast, lobbying is a huge ticket on most companies' P&L, and anti-competitive legislation being introduced is almost a standard and accepted way of doing business (e.g. Rick Santorum trying to stop the National Weather Service from making its data public, on behalf of the people who funded his campaign - a textbook anticompetitive move which should be highly illegal and is definitely anti-constitutional). There are a few laws (such as 377A) which (oddly) nobody brought up yet that are a holdover from the British colonial legislature and haven't been voted out yet, for cultural reasons. I think it's a matter of time, as the nation evolves these things will too. So, under that framework, where is Singapore's rights infringement? Which of my arguments do you disagree with?
• scurvy 11y ago
  I believe 2 people were executed for drug crimes last year. I would argue that the government is overbearing. The air is clean until Malaysia starts a few fires again. Were you there for F1 in 2014? Certainly living in Singapore has its upsides. You trade away certain rights for what some would consider a high quality of life. It's basically ethics bargaining. I'm not saying it's terrible. I'm just saying it's not conducive to entrepreneurial ventures. Out of curiosity, do you work for a large, multinational company? Also not to be pedantic, but it's hanged, not hung.