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Comment by radicaldreamer | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco has many more creatives per capita than Singapore... you can see the effects of a police state without freedom of speech in film and literature (or even a comparison with Hong Kong until very recently).

San Francisco has some very obvious problems, but there's no way I'd rather be in Singapore as someone who has worked at social media startups, crypto, and dabbling in biotech/longevity... the early opportunities aren't there because the imagination and freedom to pursue it isn't there.

It's a systems problem because allowing serious dissent and dissatisfaction can inspire innovation.

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> San Francisco has many more creatives per capita than Singapore

This is out of scope.

The comparison is about city management. Not creativity.

When you talk about creativity, SF is at the forfront a giant nation of 300M people, 2 orders of magnitude larger population and market size. That naturally support more creativity and innovation.

As for how much the market contribute to your claimed advantage, it's hard to measure. It might be that indeed SF per capita creativity, excluding market impact, is better than SG. I have no reason to doubt that, but I see not proof.

Not mentioning other aspects when you are a central cit in a superpower.

> When you talk about creativity, SF is at the forfront a giant nation of 300M people, 2 orders of magnitude larger population and market size. That naturally support more creativity and innovation.

If we're talking about the Bay Area tech startup founders then roughly half of those are born outside of the US. Singapore could have just as easily attracted those immigrants, but they went to SF instead.

You are repeating my point. More creative people move to SF because there offer better chance of success, which is fundamentally determined by the market size (and capital etc). That's not because SF is managed better. Swap SF mayor and SG primer minister, you still have the same SF and SG (very likely, let's not be mirred in hypothetical assumption).

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