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Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

I lived in Singapore for a couple years and I can say that, at least as an expat, you hardly feel restrictions. Of the Singaporeans I know, locals from young to old, they all love it.

Like all countries, it has its issues, but consider:

- Freedom of religion particularly stands out

- It has great and affordable health care

- It's safe

- Very easy to do business

I could list more. Maybe freedom means something different to you than to me. Like I said, there's definitely room for improvement, but I think they're doing way more right than wrong.

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As someone who live in Singapore, yeap, pretty much the same experiences. There's a lot of FUD about Singapore strictness but many are exaggerated.

E.g. If you smoke, you gonna hate Singapore. Because if you get caught smoking in the wrong area, you will be fined. If you throw the butts on the floor, you will be fined if an officer caught you.

Drug is one thing if you cannot live without, you shouldn't come to Singapore.

I think most people don’t “feel” unfree even in most dictatorships. You don’t read or hear about the people locked up. As long as you live a notmal life you will feel free.

The real test of freedom is when something goes wrong or you challenge the authorities.

I suspect your sample size was heavily biased to your own social class. Singapore is ruthlessly capitalist, and can be a terrible place to be if you're poor or a foreign worker.

One Straits Times (local Pravda) story I recall was about one of those old ladies who cleans up in hawker centres, earning on the order of S$100/month. This is way below a living wage, even in Singapore, and there's no state pension in Singapore either, so this was the sum total of her income. Because she couldn't afford an apartment, she slept (illegally) on the "void deck" (ground floor, exposed to elements) of an HDB housing block.

None of this was news, mind you -- the news was the fact that somebody stole her life savings of $50 from a cookie jar, and this is not permissible in squeaky-clean Singapore.

Many maids are also kept in modern-day slavery, working 365/24/7 and literally locked into the apartment so they don't run off and get pregnant, in which case the maid is forcibly repatriated and the owner is fined.

More eye-opening reading here: http://twc2.org.sg/

> Many maids are also kept in modern-day slavery, working 365/24/7

In order to get a maid in Singapore you have to pass a test. They are also paid ~500-700/m which is a lot more than they earn in their own countries. For example the minimum monthly income in Cambodia is roughly ~120$. So they earn a lot more in Singapore. Also maids must be given 1 day off per week.

Now every single person I know who has a maid treats them well, a co-worker of mine who is Indian paid for her maid to go back to India for 2 weeks while she went on holiday. This sort of thing is not uncommon.

Now that doesn't mean there are not bad apples in Singapore, I've read stories of maids who have been locked up and not paid, or forced to clean the outside of windows on the 20th story of an apartment block. But if caught, those families get in a lot of trouble. In asia, everything is about face, that doesn't go for just the families, in singapore it's the country too. So they put a lot of effort into ensuring people are safe and protected so it never gets a bad reputation.

> earning on the order of S$100/month

This is rubbish. The entry level for a cleaner is $1000/m, not $100, the salary goes up if you're skilled in operating cleaning machines and such, not just picking up trash. Also the government subsidizes salaries of workers over the age of retirement.

Singapore doesn't have handouts. You don't get handed money because you're old or unemployed. What they do is if you as a company hire someone over a certain age, the government will pay a portion of the salary. This is why Singapore has many workers who are old, and why tax in Singapore is so low.

Housing is also subsidized if you're a low income earner, or little to no family support. You still need to pay rent, but its a fraction of what non-subsidized renters pay.

You're confusing what ought to be with what is. Yes, maids are supposed to be given one day off a week on paper, but who enforces that? Maids and other foreign workers are also not supposed to pay huge sums to agents to score jobs in Singapore, but they do, often ending up in debt, with loan sharks threatening their families if they don't complete their terms.

It's not a question of "bad apples", but the system being stacked so heavily in the employers' favor that it effectively tolerates if not outright encourages abuse. The kind of thing that ends up in the courts and newspapers is only the tip of the iceberg: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-see-more-cases...

Note how frequently the employers threaten their victims with repatriation or the police!

Re: homeless cleaner lady, the story in question was ~10 years ago, but my understanding is that it was not a formal job, but some sort of off the books/cash in hand arrangement -- hence the $100 figure, which was indeed absurdly low even at the time. And not everybody can afford even subsidized housing:

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/singapore-ho...

> You're confusing what ought to be with what is. Yes, maids are supposed to be given one day off a week on paper, but who enforces that?

You been to lucky plaza on a Sunday? Chaos. Mustafa? Botanic Guardens? Gardens by the Bay?

These places are littered with maids every weekend. Some maids choose not to go out. 2 friends of mine have maids, and both their maids go out for 1 hour on Sunday to send money back, then come home, because they don't want to waste money.

The vast majority of maids live happily.

This is another case of "the minority ruin it for the majority". A few Muslim extremists have made a lot of the world think majority of Muslim people are bad people, when the majority are really awesome.

So yes it is a question about a few bad apples.

Of course there are people in Lucky Plaza and Mustafa on Sundays: there are on the order of 250,000 maids in Singapore, and around 1.6 million foreign workers total.

My argument is not that all Singaporeans are monsters, or that all foreign workers are oppressed, but that simply that the system as it is today has very few protections against the abuse of its most vulnerable, and the OP's claim that "all Singaporeans love it" is pretty darn starry-eyed.

I have my own issues with Singapore but the picture you're painting is ludicrously off-base. $100 a month? No-one, literally no-one, is paid that.

There's no such thing as a society without any injustice but in my experience the vast majority of maids are pretty happy with their lot and many spend decades in the service of one family. Indeed, I have often thought the maids in Singapore are happier than their bosses. Certain people will have issues, probably unsolvable, of any economic structure which allows anyone to have a maid but it's far better than what the alternative is.

> Singapore is ruthlessly capitalist, and can be a terrible place to be if you're poor or a foreign worker.

Which Asian countries do you think have it better, in this respect, than Singapore?

Japan and Taiwan come to mind. What's kind of unique about Singapore in Asia is that it's very wealthy, yet its social safety net and worker protections are quite lacking.

lacking how? We do have supporting schemes for the lower income brackets

>>Singapore is ruthlessly capitalist, and can be a terrible place to be if you're poor or a foreign worker.

That's an overly simplistic and inaccurate analysis. The protection of private property rights, and the freedom to contract, which collectively you call "ruthlessly capitalist", is what generates the economic opportunities that allow people in Singapore to hire foreign workers.

Without the market rights you are critical of, many of those foreign worker jobs would not exist. If you think the foreign workers would be better off in their home country, you have a naive understanding of migrant labor.

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