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Comment by bluedanieru | Hacker News Reader

It's not the rules that keep me out of Singapore it's the disproportionate response for breaking them. I don't mind if a place I'm visiting doesn't want me to chew gum or has a law about flushing the toilet, and I think for both of these the punishment is (high) fines so it's only money. But death penalty for drug possession? Count me out. Not that I would bring drugs there, but in any civilized nation the worst thing that could happen if I were falsely accused and could not prove my innocence is a variable amount of jail time. In Singapore, I would die. You might argue that this could be said of any country with capital punishment and you'd be correct, however for Singapore it applies to more crimes and is administered more freely.

Singapore is a dangerous country.

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I'm not a fan of the death penalty. But to be afraid of dying in Singapore is silly. Singapore is probably the safest country on the planet. There is no crime. No natural disasters. A good, cheap medical system. A great transportation system. A booming economy. All things that make you safer and live longer.

I just moved to London from Singapore and I don't understand why westerners put up with such high levels of crime. Its awesome to be able to ride the train at night and walk through any park or dark street anywhere in a major city at 1am and feel completely 100% safe.

Westerners distrust government because government sucks in the West. They tax you at high rates and give you long lines and crappy service. In Singapore government works. It produces jobs, every government form is online and the rules are ALL practical and actually make sense (unlike the west). Policemen are polite and courteous. My Singaporian wife paid 5% in taxes last year btw.

And above all its safe to go for a run at night!

And above all its safe to go for a run at night!

...unless it turns out to be illegal to go for a run at night, in which case it's terribly unsafe, and there's no way for a person from a "legal to run at night" country to know without checking.

Now, you might say, "Well, that's ridiculous; there's no reason why it would be illegal to run at night," but I think I can come up with at least as good reasons for making that illegal as for banning chewing gum. Making things illegal when there is no obvious reason for them to be illegal creates uncertainty and doubt; mixing in life-altering punishments provides fear, as well.

Chewing gum is really expensive to clean up from streets, and they have invested a lot in having nice streets. It's just a cost/benefit thing.

It's cheaper to fine the blood out of people for not flushing public toilets than to pay staff to check in every thirty minutes, and the reduction in costs (and maybe other things) means that Singapore has awesome public toilets.

The stated reason for the ban was to reduce vandalism of the MRT. That doesn't make it obvious.

Fair enough.

no gum on the train is a good thing. seems obvious to me?

I get all that in Japan without the jackboots. Japan has its own set of problems with regard to justice but nothing like Singapore. I do agree with you about London though. I was asked if I wanted to relocate there for work and gave an immediate 'no'. (I might have taken longer but I had just seen Harry Browne a few days before.)

Point being, what you say about safety is true, but I don't think much of the credit belongs to Singapore's government and legal system. Perhaps rather to a culture with a stronger sense of civic responsibility. I don't agree that you can't have both security and freedom and think any proposal to trade one for the other is foolish.

My anecdotal 2 cents. Singapore is full of Chinese people. More than one Chinese person has expressed to me that they are okay with a little loss of freedom to reduce the alternative of chaos.

This is the opposite of a sense of civic responsibility, and roughly translates as Chinese people don't trust each other to behave without strict police.

(I wish we could accept the same about my own country)

I'm surprised how misinformed you are. There's no law about flushing the toilet and even if there is, it's not easily enforceable. But then again there's fine for littering, but then again it's hardly enforceable. No one is watching your back to make sure you throw your trash in the right place. You are just expected to be civil enough to do it. And btw, possessing drugs does not give you the death penalty. Smuggling does. Possessing drugs give you a relatively minor sentence like a few months to a few years in jail.

You shouldn't start a reply like that when you're wrong on both counts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapore...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Singapore#Criminal_law

Ok if you want to go into such legal details I will try to accomodate. When I talked about possession of drugs, I am referring to possession of drugs for your own consumption and not for sale (or caught during drug trafficking). Check this out: http://www.mha.gov.sg/basic_content.aspx?pageid=74 (Search for "possesion") One of my recruit was caught with possession of drugs and I was ordered to escort him to court and to witness his sentence so that I could report back to my commanding officer. Then I learned that possession of drugs only constitute a minor offence and he only got 6 months of sentence.

Turn out I was wrong about flushing the toilet! Good gracious...anyway I have never seen people get caught in Singapore for that neither seen signs saying it's against the law to do that. I have lived in Singapore for more than 30 years and have seen countless of unflushed toilets in "coffeeshops". As I have stated earlier, even if it's against the law it's not easily enforceable. Anyway if you want to go down to nitty gritty legal details, I have to nothing to say. Go to Singapore yourself and see it for yourself.

It's not "legal details." It's mandatory death sentence for possession. And possession, regardless of the amount involved, is not proof of intent to sell. (And proof of intent to sell is not equivalent to actual sale, either, not to mention that such extreme separation of sale and possession is ridiculous.)

In Singapore, you can die for possessing a key to a residence with drugs inside. In fact, if convicted, the law is that you must die. So I will not go see for myself, thanks.

To ease your fear further, this is quoted from the Ministry of Home Affairs website I showed earlier: "Furthermore, if the accused can prove to the court that he is a chronic abuser and would therefore need to be in possession of a greater amount of drugs for his own consumption, the trafficking charge may be reduced to one of possession of a controlled drug, which does not attract the death penalty."

But then I do agree with the possibilities of a wrongful conviction. I am not a proponent of the death penalty myself but neither do I disagree with it at the same time. What I hope to do is to clear the exaggerated misinformation people have about Singapore.

Oh and when I queried for "flush toilet crime" in Google, this came out as the first result: http://www.fongnet.net/stories/singmyths.htm

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