Genuinely asking. Do most of the population believe Singapore’s authoritarian government would stay benevolent??
Singapore is the first place where I actually began to question whether democracy was the absolute way. Democracy was how I was raised. Overall, I still believe it is the way long term, but what can you do when you have a single, unified government that cares for its people is simply amazing.
Safest in the world, hands down. This can be felt in every day life. I hold tables while I get my lunch with my cell phone. I've even dared it in public "hawker centers" a number of times. My friends have had stuff stolen, but that was in the bathroom where there's no "watchful eye". My kid can run/play freely and I only worry about her running into traffic.
A about 1-2 years ago, someone was stabbed to death in the central business district. It was the biggest headline for ages - murder of passion from father-in-law. That's it... nothing else. I don't think/worry about guns - ever.
"Hawker Centers" are basically food for the people. Each meal can be had for US$2-4. I live in public housing, HDB, and while that sounds weird - 70%+ is public housing. i.e. only PR or citizens may purchase (I can rent as an expat). This keeps the price of homes at a relatively reasonable amount. US$250k - US$600k. Housing is not perfect but it is way better than stateside problems.
There are dark sides, do not get me wrong (built on the backs of migrant workers who can never gain status - is just one. Black and Chinese built US but gained status eventually... migrants can never gain status here and continue to build this country), but they're not nearly as dark as others.
Is it worth it? I say if you are willing to submit yourself, it completely is.
That said, yes, I think safety and honesty are fairly embedded. Yesterday, the case of somebody trying to bribe a condo rentacop to overlook their (illegal) AirBnB guest made the news: the guard refused the $50, reported the bribery attempt to the police, and the offender was sent to jail for a week:
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/pacific-mansi...
In most neighboring countries, if this kind of thing made headlines, the news would have nothing else.
To be fair, that is possible in a lot of countries, I would have doubts to do that in America though. And not only because of crime.
> I actually began to question whether democracy was the absolute way.
There are several democratic countries that beat Singapore in regards to safety. So I believe this to be flawed reasoning. It is a safe country, but not exceptionally so.
edit: Disregarding the fact that Singapore is officially a democracy. A benevolent dictatorship would probably look more like the Gadaffi regime. Economic success in such a dictatorship is probably mandatory.
Any figures to back that up? It's said that nothing gets stolen in Singapore, until you speak to Singaporeans. Bikes still get stolen for instance. The city seems super clean, but mainly because low paid workers clean the city really often. If a Singaporean visits another country you'll notice that they're used to the city being cleaned often, not so much that they're behaving differently.
Your "Hawker Centers" have people in their 70s bent forward cleaning up tables to some earn money. Those centers are cheap, but why does the benevolent government not care for those people?
Further, Singapore is pretty much a city, nothing more. Being isolated from any other country helps a lot too.
I think you too easily dismiss the "dark sides".
> My kid can run/play freely and I only worry about her running into traffic.
This is the same as a lot of other countries.
IMO the biggest benefit of Singapore is being a small city on pretty much an island.
A simple Google search will show you Singapore and Tokyo are regarded as the 2 safest cities on Earth, which one is first depends on which report you read.
Japanese culture is very different from pretty much any other culture. They respect each other and their country and environment. (except whales) They are raised from a young age to look after each other and respect each other. Something the rest of the world could learn from.
Culture is a product of your environment.
japan also has something like a 99 percent conviction rate, not sure how that aligns with being anti authoritarian.
21 days to be arraigned is nothing to be proud of, however.
As opposed to, say, cleaners in the West, which are paid more than engineers,
A friend of mine left her cellphone in a mall bathroom once, on the bench when she washed her hands. Went all the way home and realised she forgot it.
After ~4 hours when she reached the mall. It was still sitting where she left it.
> Your "Hawker Centers" have people in their 70s bent forward cleaning up tables to some earn money.
There is no social safety net in Singapore. So once you get old, there's no benefit or dole, or any government funded programs to give you a comfy life where tax payers pay for you. The idea is you life off your CPF. Because there are people who have no savings. The government subsidizes their salaries. If a company hires them then the government will pay a portion of the salary, this gives incentive to businesses to hire them.
You could raise taxes for businesses and individuals, but then who would move their business or come work in Singapore?
Googling it seems ranked about no 5 to 7 in the world eg https://safearound.com/danger-rankings/
Democratic Iceland seems to be #1 mostly. Fun Iceland fact:
>It [has] the oldest surviving parliament in the world, a claim shared by Tynwald. The Althing was founded in 930 at Þingvellir ("thing fields" or "assembly fields"), situated approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) east of what later became the country's capital, Reykjavík.
But it‘s also very sterile imo. Sure there is awesome street food and culture in general to a degree. But i kept missing the borderline stuff there. I like to live in a place where people are allowed to make mistakes, even criminal ones in some cases, and not have their live be over Immediately. That sounds weird to some i suppose.
Maybe for US persons this seems like a paradise, but its not a unique place. I know where I want to raise my kids. It sure as hell ain't some artificial bubble like Singapore. Never have been there, plenty of colleagues did (or live there), cool and all but not great for actually settling there.
I value true freedom way too high.
You are an expat from United States, so your experience is much much different than most people there. Westerners are immediately moved to the top of the culture stack.
There absolutely are abuses, particularly for maids and manual laborers, but many of the worst (eg advance fees that put them into debt) are explicitly illegal in Singapore, and calling white-collar expats "slave labor" is absurd hyperbole.
The ethnic bias is real and extreme, and they take advantage of the employee’s home country disadvantage when setting terms.
I would say the contemporary West's emphasis on authoritarianism is probably doing more harm than good. First of all the emphasis doesn't make things better - authoritarian would continue to be authoritarian whether you put the emphasis on their authoritarian nature or not. Secondly, it's pretty much a heresy suppression situation [1] here, or a (conscious or subconscious) distraction strategy embedded in the mode of thinking if you will, both of which are ironically what authoritarianism is best at i.e. suppression and distraction. Ultimately there is some form of authoritarianism existing in every system. You just have to look deep enough. Of course, some systems enjoy more democracy and a higher degree of freedom than the others, while some enjoy more achievements in KPI. But by emphasising on a system's authoritarian nature you are painting yourself a much simpler picture about the world here as if it is authoritarian v.s. the people, when things are so much more complicated than that.
It's very unfortunate that comment like this one is getting downvotes on HN.