Comment by kablamo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kablamo | Hacker News Reader

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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)

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