Disneyland with Death Penalty
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Gibson's main critique, from what I can tell, is the lack of much of a counterculture similar to what you'd find in the U.S. allied-bloc (Europe, U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand), combined with wealth and modernity that you would find in such countries. He compares it to America in the 1950's. I can't help but think there's an underlying prejudice in the way he and others think countries should develop, where as they get richer they should be more like rich countries he's used to (ironically enough, the problem for many seems to be that Singapore _isn't_ the same as the other developed nations they're used to).
Though he does praise the food at the hawker centers, which I can at least agree with (and which are far away from any idea of sterile and boring).
Gibson didn't look hard enough; there was definitely counterculture in Singapore at the time he wrote the story. A bit lazy on his part, but he's not a trained journalist. And there still is one now, although much less so than in the 90s.
The vibe I got from my time there is that most Singaporeans who are counterculture-inclined just leave for larger countries, in the same way a bohemian-inclined Swiss person might move to, say, New York or Berlin.
The larger problem Singapore has is that there's very little space for the arts in general, let alone counterculture.
Non-journalist Gibson smelled the 'trend' early. It is also visible in videos which wander 'developed' world city streets. Space for inscrutable (nothing to say) welded sculptures/'child-like' murals always seems to be found. And space for 'approved' historic cultures. But not for an underground press, nor for non-violent protest, nor for authentic graffiti. Not nearly as total, then, but somewhat like North Korea, the land of identical choices.
Edit: "Through the policing of all these scales, moral geographies contribute to the construction of desired "Singaporean" identities."
( Singapore Lily on "Music and moral geographies: Constructions of "nation" and identity in Singapore" [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41148026])
Counterculture is healthy and natural for many reasons, and its absence is a concerning indicator for any nation.
As for culture, Gibson is dismissive of their music and gets bothered that people in music stores don't recognize the Japanese punk band he likes. Rather than being open to the local music (which I personally have enjoyed), he's bothered that the people he meets aren't following along with the same global cosmopolitan trends he's accustomed to.
You didn't need the laws unless you had a population who wanted to do the things.
You can even look at capital punishment, which the article headline highlights. Most countries in the region have it.
> Article 11. The people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights. These fundamental human rights guaranteed to the people by this Constitution shall be conferred upon the people of this and future generations as eternal and inviolate rights.
It can’t get any clearer than this. Even suggest replacing that with “freedom is just a means to an end,” and Tokyo, or rather, the entire country is going to be pissed.
Never been to NYC btw.
Until 2019 Tokyo schools required all students to have black hair—including dyeing hair for students who don’t have black hair naturally. In America people would consider that a violation of “universal human rights.” Bangladeshis aren’t quite so conformist, but my parents would flip out if I did anything to my appearance that would stand out in public.
Perhaps you are not creative or evil enough for exploring alternatives.
Unfortunately Singapore is, in some ways, much like Dubai. The sad thing is that they're defended with "well it's pretty safe there and they don't really arrest people for that anymore even though they have the legal power to and they have a pride parade and stuff too so it's fine". So why don't they change their laws?
It's also another wacky country where being gay is illegal only for men. Like I know certain types of porn are popular with straight guys, but like, seriously?
Do they prosecute you even if you're simply gay (and not doing any sexual activity whatsoever)?
I'm not sure it really matters sexual activity or not, the whole "just don't be gay" or "just don't have sex then" thing is offensive.
If you are earning a comfortable 6 figure salary in a developed nation, living in an extremely safe neighborhood with access to great education and healthcare, you kind assume all those things are easy and the only thing that matters is food/music diversity and counter-culture.
For the rest of 7,950,000,000 people on earth, any country that provides safety, basic food, health, decent education is a heaven and wouldn't mind if their own country is like Singapore
Now, I'm not sure it was as bad as the stories made it sound. Let's be real. Some amount of what we heard was sensationalized for storytelling effect but don't completely discount that people will forgo material comforts for dignity, honor and autonomy.
> For the rest of 7,950,000,000 people on earth, any country that provides safety, basic food, health, decent education is a heaven and wouldn't mind if their own country is like Singapore
I wouldn't say freedom was high on any of their lists explicitly, but they talk about things like the casual culture and work life balance that are all related to it. The arts also aren't high on their list, but a few of them had some things to say when Singapore Idol was being advertised back in the day. They didn't think they'd find a single decent singer due to their country's lack of investment or respect for the arts which was ingrained in them from their schooling. It was a running joke for a while.
To me, absolute liberty seems to be just as wrong of an answer as absolute authoritarianism.
See below:
https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017763753-Use-the...
Kobo also has first-class integration with Overdrive/Libby for borrowing digital library books.
Gibson ascribes this to the fairly authoritarian nature of the Singapore government, but I think a much bigger contributor to this feeling is simply the age of everything there.
I think the "culprit" is the fact that they experienced a tremendous amount of growth and socio-economic upward momentum in an incredibly small amount of time. This means that in any given neighborhood, every structure you can see was likely built within a decade or two of any other visible structure. It's not like London or even New York City which grew organically and slowly over centuries.
You can wander around the endless seas of identical strip-malls and suburban neighborhoods that have exploded in places like Utah and Texas over the last 20-30 years for a similar feeling of emptiness and homogeneity.
I find it interesting the impression I personally formed of Singapore exactly matches the one Gibson did over a decade earlier. I understand how a particular kind of person could see it as a paradise, but personally I found it the most depressing place on earth.
Singapore imports a lot of Indian (and other South Asian), SEA, Chinese migrant labor as well, to live in conditions that are not great. I mean, not as bad as emirates, but not that great either:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...
https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/06/19/singapores-migrant... (recent treatment during COVID lockdowns)
> Food is definitely better in Dubai.
Singaporean hawker centres are pretty world famous.
Singapore has a much better street and regular local/Chinese/Indian/SE Asian food scene.
It kind of does. They import Bangladeshi construction workers to build all the glitzy skyscrapers and infrastructure and shove them in dorms 16 to a room.
Im not sure if they confiscate their passports or not like in Dubai but i think they still do those contracts where they have to pay an agent and work off their debts.
A fair number die because of lax health and safety that is lax because theyre "only banglas".
If there are differences in how theyre treated vs dubai theyre more a matter of degree than character. Theyre very much at the bottom of singapore's racial hierarchy.
Theres the occasional case of maid slavery as well.
A couple more things I've noticed on my visits. Trucks and work vans allow people to ride in the back unsecured. They'd never let real citizens do that in their safer cars.
The airport had an entire separate processing line for the plane from Bangladesh one time when I visited.
I once arrived late at night when the newer terminal was being finished, and leaving the carpark saw rows and rows of shoes. The workers were all sleeping under the carpark exit ramp in the open air.
Those dorms mentioned caused some issues when COVID ripped through recently too.
Yes, most laborers are working off a debt to their agent. Confiscating passports is technically illegal, but very common in practice.
Safety regulations are tighter than in the Middle East, although still lax by the standards of most other developed countries.
People can report labor rights violations to the government, which sometimes even investigates them and takes action. But they are mostly content to turn a blind eye unless something is very egregious, and labor rights NGOS are understaffed and underfunded. And strikes are effectively illegal.
Unlike in the Middle East you can leave the country without your employer's permission, but this might be easier said than done in a lot of cases.
So, more indentured servitude than slavery. Still not great.
In dubai/qatar they just do it more and worse and also like to confiscate their passports (although technically thats illegal now...).
A friend of a friend often quips that the best way to get good Mexican in Boston is to go to Logan and fly almost anywhere else.
Boston needs a proper taqueria, and San Francisco needs a proper pizzeria.
Boston needs proper Thai food, and San Francisco needs proper ice cream.
Etc.
I don't remember where I read it, but one indicator is that when Boston's baseball team comes to Oakland, there are more Boston fans in attendance than Oakland fans.
Mediocre place with such an inflated sense of relevance. I feel like nobody would notice or care if so many aspects of Boston and people from there didn't think people cared.
Our Mexican food's great, though, so we have that going for us.
It’s a very subjective critique… I live in a foodie city and am long tired of overpriced sandwiches splashed with an aioli served for a cool $20, no drink no side.
Went to a no name city for hiking and found a nice hole in the wall shop with great food at a quarter the price and found my kind of foodie.
But some parts of the world just have less access to fresh produce, less cultural diversity, etc. That doesn't seem quite so subjective. And there is good food to be found pretty much everywhere, that is not the point.
I could make the most easiest case that Singapore has better food than Dubai. Just because I said so.
I find them silly and not very useful.
Similarly, "I had the best ramen at this place" or "For authentic X food, you have to visit X" or "City X has the worst drivers" (Literally everyone says that about their city).
Seems it is still happening.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/average-of-12-people-...
There was an excessive deference towards authority (derived from confucianism, i think) that rubbed me up the wrong way and a definite streak of selfishness/uncaringness that permeated the culture. Also that shallow vapid wealth-worshipping thing that "crazy rich asians" captured so accurately.
I remember the way foreign workers were treated was just brutal, too. I was there for the bus driver strikes and the little india riot and i was appalled by how thuggish the authorities acted in both cases while everyone else just shrugged.
Plenty of casual racism lurking under the surface too, although white people are probably more of a beneficiary of that than a victim. This is perhaps partly why so many love the place.
>Singapore's destiny will be to become nothing more than a smug, neo-Swiss enclave of order and prosperity, amid a sea of unthinkable ... weirdness.
There is a lot to like in a "neo-Swiss enclave of order and prosperity".
Obviously this clashes quite hard with cyberpunk using the aesthetic of Asia for characters who epitomise American ideas of rebellion, competition and countercultural coolness...
Also, "filial duty" is pretty strong across a number of Asian cultures. i.e. you should be thinking of your family (parents, grandparents) before yourself.
Does this go the other way too? Is the boss staying late (with the expectation that others do so as well) considered rude because it inconveniences his workers?
Because if not, this has nothing to do with being polite and everything to do with power and deference to power.
That doesn't dismiss the concerns about deference to power though.
Google "chinese spitting" [1] and then extrapolate form there.
[1] f.x.: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-22184499
Fareed Zakaria's interview with Lee Kuan Yew, the country's modern founder, is required reading for pretty much anyone hoping to understand the developing world, multiculturalism, etc. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20045923
Of course there are quite literally thousands of reasons that explain Singapore's economic growth. Attributing everything to only one of them, to the influence of an enlightened dictator, is silly.
Want an opposite anecdote? In my country we experienced our greatest transformation in centuries in our first ~20 years of democracy. The country is radically different now from what it was 50 years ago, and it only happened when democracy and civil liberties suddenly and unexpectedly came into the picture.
If the country you’re using as an example is in Eastern Europe, I think you may be overlooking key differences. Fareed Zakaria addresses this in his book “the Future of Freedom.” https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Re.... He explains that many of the foundations of liberal democracy were put in place during autocratic regimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom. Eastern Europe had many building blocks of democracy in place hundreds of years ago. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks.
Is Hong Kong now more prosperous, after it moved to authoritarian rule?
What are your criteria for "authoritarian", that you count Japan among authoritarian countries?
What is your evidence that the authoritarian policies were the deciding factor in generating prosperity for these countries?
Yeah people had personal freedom, but they couldn’t do anything with it.
Being a city state means it's hard to hide when things get ugly. Having capitals far away from citizenry, on the other hand - like in myanmar or brazil, makes it easy to be corrupt. This is a well studied phenomenon.
Lee Kuan Yew was palpably afraid in 1965 - especially of the domestic communists. That was probably a good thing in most respects - he knew he had to improve living standards or he'd be strung up. He did, partly by following the good advice of albert winsemius.
It also led to his authoritarian streak and his censor happy ways, of course. The fear ran both ways.
1950s america was also a time where elites were palpably fearful of domestic communists. It also combined with fast improving living standards and the largest scale house building to date. That might just all be a giant coincidence though.
The geography of Singapore gets thrown around a lot to detract from how much Lee Kuan Yew’s deliberate decisions made Singapore what it is today. Which is a shame because that makes it hard for other developing countries to learn from Singapore’s example.
I find the geography doesnt really get thrown around a lot. Lee Kuan Yew's boasts that the city became rich despite "no natural resources" does though, which i find to be misleading.
There is obviously more to the story than just the port but it's important to understand the inbuilt advantages the city did have given the obvious incentive to "replicate" what happened, especially when the story told by the island's cult of personality was so keen to downplay them in favor of his genius leadership and the grit and determination of the people.
(I say cult of personality because I queued up to see his dead body lying in state... and the experience with him, mao, kim jong il and kim il sung wasnt all that different)
Most of the economic development was critically dependent upon the port and its status as a transshipment hub at a global crossroads. Getting Shell to build a refinery in cape town or bhutan would have been a lot harder.
Fascinating, I'd never really thought of this. Do you have a link to any studies about this phenomenon?
There is little question that a few countries in Asia benefitted from authoritarianism, some were more kid glovish than others, and obviously some were more violent than others in suppressing dissent. However, they achieved economic success for their people --though not all. The Philippines are an example where corruption as well as high pop growth dragged down progress. China too, initially was too authoritarian and too ideological, till they opened up their economy, or at least removed much of the stigma against "wealth" and invited foreign investment.
Singapore is a rare contemporary example of a city-state, & I think that makes the scenario very different from most cases. Using this as an example seems ill suited.
Let's compare to one of your other cited cases, Philippines. Both experienced to degrees the wave of modernization following WW2, a moment of great possibility. Singapore is a very small nation, 1/4 the size of the smallest US State, Rhode Island. Sinagpore is positioned nicely amid a number of other countries giving it close trade access, and at the sea-most tip of a major intercontinental route. The Philippines is almost 100x bigger, about on par with Nevada, the 7th largest state, with much more space & population to tend to. Philippines is non-continugous in extreme, a nation of many islands, further exarcerbating the difficulty of effective governance. Philippines are isolated by a couple hundred miles of sea from other nations, and located rather at the edge of the map.
Singapore is one of the few city-states left on this planet, and it was one permitted to strain & grow at a crucial inflection point in human history.
Too authoritarian and too ideological China lifted more people out of poverty faster than had previously happened on the planet. The problem was that Mao was insulated from information and his intentions were filtered through a corrupt collection of creeps who surrounded him, his wife being one of the worst. It eventually made him completely out of touch, and even his intentions became bizarre. The opening of the economy saved a country on fire, and wouldn't have been needed if they had established a proper system with proper succession and safeguards against corruption.
Removing stigma against wealth seriously damaged China culturally; instead of unity in beliefs and values, they drifted into boring nationalism. They used to fight for each other, now they fight for China.
One aspect about this topic that I’ve never seen discussed anywhere, is the bidirectional relationship between countries, such as how authoritarian and corrupt countries export their authoritarianism and corruption to other countries in the same way that the US exports their weapons, capitalism, entertainment, and soft power, but very rarely, if ever, their "freedom", as if that’s the one thing, in spite of the excessive rhetoric, that isn’t fungible.
For an example of what I’m talking about, much of the political chaos and tendency towards authoritarianism in the US that we’ve seen in the post-9/11 era, has been imported from autocratic and authoritarian regimes. From what I’ve read, the first reports of massive online political trolling operations outside of Russia and China were first observed and reported on from the Philippines at the beginning of the Obama admin in the US.
Interviews with regional human rights groups at the time noted that the trolling operations in the Philippines were being used in the same way as repressive regimes in the Middle East had previously used them—to deliberately spread conspiracy theories so as to destabilize the information held by the electorate and to shift the power from independent media sources that provide checks and balances on power to authoritarian regimes which relied on the conspiracy theories to foment confusion and consolidate hegemony.
We saw the same thing occur in the US beginning in 2016, with the rise of Trumpism and its associated conspiracy theories known as QAnon. Was it just a coincidence that their origin point was also the Philippines?
Trolling though, that is also not new. The VoA and North Korean campaigns, to name but two, have promoted all kinds of destabilizing theories. The difference is the media used --Duterte used it to great success and so did ISIS.
I'm not sure what you were expecting or what what angle you were approaching this article from.
There's more to life than economics and politics. I thought it was an interesting piece of history (especially as a Gibson fan) and also thought provoking aesthetic critique.
Gibson even said "Singapore's destiny will be to become nothing more than a smug, neo-Swiss enclave of order and prosperity, amid a sea of unthinkable... weirdness."
It was a commentary on culture and human behavior, an orthogonal topic.
He wasn't suggesting Singapore sacrifice economics for culture, or as far as I can tell, making any suggestion at all.
It is weird that so many people conflate the topics, as if art, history, and as Gibson would put it "weirdness" are inherently in conflict with material prosperity.
>Whatever draconian measures it took to get there, they were worth it.
I feel as though most lovers of liberty would disagree with this statement, whether it comes from the right wing or the left wing; it could justify literally any horror to humanity, and at worst justifies waiting out decades of repression and poor quality of life for anticipated gains for two generations of people down the line. I'm reminded that a similar argument is used to justify the maintenance of sweatshops.
unfortunately that word more and more means "your universal human rights don't apply here". Many cultures across the world are decades and even centuries behind when it comes to human rights. The naturally authoritarian regimes there are usually don't care that much about the culture and only using that word to protect their power as the societal move forward to progress threatens that power. Among the most glaring examples these days - traditionalist/conservative Russia using tremendous violence trying to reign in the Ukrainian people's move to progress with Russia being one of the leaders today in the use of "multiculturalism" as a guise to cover its violence.
Are a lie. You only have the rights that you are able to wrest away from your government and those are far from universal.
Look at freedom of speech for example, then try to criticize the royal family when in Thailand.
Of look at your "right to self-defense", then look at how several western countries are acting in that regard. Or NYC even.
The US constitution states that only the powers enumerated are given to the government and everything else is reserved for the people. But look at how we act when our political adversaries are silenced or trampled, "Show me where in the constitution you have that right". We are willing to throw away our power to hurt those we find distasteful.
There is nothing universal about rights, except that you must win them through struggle and guard them jealously
Where do these “universal human rights” come from? Who decides what they are? It’s hard to overlook the fact that, in practice, “universal human rights” means “the morals beliefs of people of European descent.” (Observe the downvotes to my comment below describing how Asians view the obligations of children to their parents.)
Further, large numbers of people with at least some theistic leanings were/are nevertheless adherents to legal positivism, which explains how you can have Catholics or Lutherans that were okay with the Nuremberg Laws, for example.
That’s just creating a religion, complete with supernatural assertions—things that are “inherent our existence” but can’t be established empirically—without copping to it.
That is not to say that conservatives don’t believe in “universal human rights”—for example those who believe that a society can’t permit abortion because it violates the right to life. But conservatives don’t deny that they believe in a God we can’t see that makes rules for the world.
“Universal human rights” tends to reflect in practice the individualistic quasi-religious beliefs of European-descended liberals. In an international context it functions as a form of cultural supremacy by people who claim to reject such ideas. But isn’t it curious how on everything from the nature of marriage, to familial obligation, to sexual morality, to criminal justice, to when it’s okay to extinguish nascent human life, societies run by white people have figured out the correct “universal” answer while Bangladeshis, Nigerians, and apparently even Singaporeans have got it all wrong? This is a harder road to hoe for people who claim not to believe that their society is chosen by God to be a shining city on a hill.
Even in 1993 — which was my first visit to Singapore — you could easily find many of the things he bemoaned missing.
It sounds like he stayed in a hotel in Orchard and limited his exposure to what he could see there and in the CBD (Central Business District).
He made zero effort, it appears, to go into the heartlands or to visit Tiong Bahru or the various heritage areas.
To me it is just one more example of the White Westerner visiting the "exotic land", and becoming an instant expert.
Oh, and that running off and catching the next flight out of town. I highly doubt that in those days you would just jump on a plane without a little pre-planning.
Compare that to the city I live in. It's safe enough during the day but at night you need to know where you are down to the block and be aware of your surroundings.
Honestly if I had a job there and could convince my wife I'd move to Singapore - it's not the Switzerland of Asia but it's something close to that.
At least the areas I have been in. (Which would be 1% of Japan maybe) I could not believe they had vending machines that sold laptops and other highly expensive items.
That thing would be robbed hours after it was mounted where I come from.
I have been told a couple of times, that if you commit violent crime against someone in Tokyo you need to be more worried about reprisals from organized crime than from the police.
I presume it is an urban myth but coming from the US it is hard to imagine how Japan is able to keep the streets as safe as they do.
Huhu
Try living in both.
Not sure Kowloon Walled City was notable for vibrant nightlife, producing great art or being merciful to people caught competing with local drug cartels either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_P._Fay
There was a huge media frenzy in the run-up to the punishment. Then he got caned, had a sore bottom, and life went on.
Under the 1966 Vandalism Act, originally passed to curb the spread of political graffiti and which specifically penalized vandalism of government property,[1] Fay was sentenced on March 3, 1994, to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,814 or £2,114 at the time), and six strokes of the cane.[6] Shiu, who pleaded not guilty, was sentenced to eight months in prison and 12 strokes of the cane.[7]
Yes, the US does not cane people but it also has a death penalty, bad prison conditions relative to other g-20 nations (solitary confinement for example), and people get long sentences for recidivism, or for certain felonies, or under 3 strikes laws. I think there is room for improvement for many countries, not just Singapore. He was sentenced 4 months for stealing the signs, which is commensurate with a misdemeanor in the US (1 year max).
...which is reserved for far more severe crimes, usually murder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_Unit...
He was living with his mother in Singapore, so while he was a US citizen, he was stealing street signs "at home."
Also vandalism and theft of street signs is certainly quite common in St Louis, where he lived before moving to Singapore.
If the US would properly apply the death penalty more, that would solve most of issues you list. Recidivism necessarily goes to zero, no need for solitary, etc.
Singapore is one of the safest countries in the world. When I've brought up how much I like Singapore someone always retorts "Oh, that place where you get arrested for walking down the sidewalk and chewing gum" to which I also respond "Well, I could be in the USA where I get walk down the sidewalk and get mugged"
Singapore has way better clubs than SF or LA. If you want to party hard until late at night it's got plenty of options. Vs SF/LA where there's a 2am curfew your options effectively end at 1:30am.
Singapore has amazing food options open until 4-5am. Try getting food in LA/SF after 11. Your options becoming Dennys and that's about it.
Oh but someone said Singapore is boring. Did they actually go? For me, having to stop partying at 1:30 way more boring than partying til 3-4 am and then heading to a hawker marker for food options at 10-15 stands.
Singapore had taxis you could order on apps before Uber existed. Singapore has amazing public transportation. MRT lines and busses and easy access to reasonably priced taxis.
I get that the government is a little on the strict side but I find it hilarious that none of the Apple fans who spout how much they love Apple's walled garden don't see the parallels. I like places where I can go to a cafe, leave my stuff on the table to go-order and not have it stolen. I like it far more than USA culture where people have gotten so used to living in an a pit of crime that they blame the victim for any theft and there are signs everywhere "don't leave anything in your car!" because the police/government can't be bothered to do their jobs and instead let the baddies run/ruin the city for everyone else. In the USA, "oh, your bike got stolen. You're an idiot for not buying a better lock or for even thinking it was safe to lock it anywhere".
and then the rest of this tiny city state comparison to two municipalities within one state in the US? (Also there are plenty of raves in LA that go till dawn, as well as strip clubs, card rooms and so on. If you want nightlife its there.)
and then corporate walled garden versus government walled garden?
how many things can you conflate at once?
> Singapore has way better clubs than SF or LA. If you want to party hard until late at night it's got plenty of options. Vs SF/LA where there's a 2am curfew your options effectively end at 1:30am.
> Try getting food in LA/SF after 11. Your options becoming Dennys and that's about it.
In LA, go to K-Town (Korea Town). Many good restaurants, lounges, and karaoke places stay open all night long. The party doesn't stop at 2AM.
"No we're not, your literature is now BANNED".
I brought a dressy Seiko watch with me, on the off chance I might want to go to a nice restaurant. I ended up wearing it daily after the first few days. There was an was almost subconscious pressure to fit in with the majority of men who wore fancy-looking (by American standards) watches casually. Among the women, I've never seen so many designer handbags in use anywhere (and I saw a fair amount of men carrying more masculine-styled bags from big-name brands as well). Yes, there is something in the cultural air that feels stifling. Fitting in with the crowd feels high-status there, whereas (to me) it feels kind of low-status in the States.
I think part of the reason this vibe feels so visible is the use of English. I pointed out to a friend I was traveling with an advertisement for a financial planning seminar for young couples as embodying something Singaporean (in America, the only people I could see attending a financial planning seminar are retirees, mainly attracted by the free dinner at Ruth's Chris). Like, every aspect of Singaporean life could be encapsulated and taught to others through some medium (seminar, book, TV show...). My friend, who is Chinese, said "oh that's just Asia." An anecdote, maybe, but it made me wonder if this aspect was not a uniquely Singaporean one, but one we only internalize in its context because we can read the billboards and understand the ads playing on the taxi radio.
So in that sense, Gibson was right. But then I went to Geylang. It feels like a different country. The place was tangled in dusty exposed electrical wires, and thronged with young people in more working-class casual garb hanging out. Grumpy restaurateurs, even a sex trade of mixed legality were also present. Despite this, it all still feels very safe, but it also feels very low-budget and safety-off. If your explore Singaporean social media a little, you'll find lots of videos of other under-the-surface stuff -- illegally modified motorcycle clubs, brawls on HDB void decks and the like. The atmosphere really changes around the island's widely varying spaces.
And even concerning that part of Singapore which Gibson observed -- Singapore runs extremely well. It worked better than any American city I've been to. I only saw one traffic jam my entire time there (it was blamed on National Day Parade rehearsals), while the public transit is cheap and everywhere. You really have to see it to believe it; it's a marvel of central city planning that, unlike American city planning, actually results in a better city that works. The presence of government feels heavy-handed at times (there are police cameras everywhere), but at the same time it oozes competence in a way that American public projects don't even come close to.
If you're a freewheeling artist like Gibson, I can see how it could feel stifling. But for a professional, even in software (known to attract misfits), it really felt like a top-tier place to get work done. I think one could adapt to it if they knew when to be inventive and when to cool it and go with the flow.
In the last 30 years, Singapore has executed more than 400 people (Wikipedia has stats for 470, but is also missing the counts for many years.) Most for drug offenses. In the same time-frame, California has executed 13 people. And none in the last 16 years, and none for drug offenses.
The brand-new death house was mothballed (which really means locked closed) on orders of the governor. There's been some talk over vacating death sentences, but courts are really reticent to do that while the penalty remains on the books, even if it's not enforced. If the state rescinded Newsom's moratorium, there's still a court-ordered moratorium that would remain in effect (once again proving that most things Gavin Newsom does are just for show, because California has always just been a stepping-stone to DC for him).
Condemned prisoners in CDCR custody are slowly being transferred to other maximum security facilities where they will have the opportunity to "program" along with other felons with long sentences (i.e. take advantage of educational, religious, vocational, and related opportunities rather than just wait to be led to the gurney). Death Row at San Quentin is scheduled to be repurposed in some way, though the state's Death Row for women is just another housing unit for segregated inmates at the women's facility in Chowchilla.
t. my present day job involves the corrections system/industry.
From a utilitarian perspective, I think it's a waste of resources. We know how to deal with absolute incorrigibles without killing them: put them in a dungeon and minimize human contact. This is what we did with Tom Silverstein and he never killed another staff member or prisoner after that. Expensive, but probably cheaper than trying to execute him. And while he put on a good show for the cameras and appeared stoic, I'd have to think his lot in life served as a deterrent to at least some others with nothing to lose who contemplate violence against staff or other prisoners.
Of course, then you've got monsters like Jaime Osuna. There's no deterring that beast, just managing it.
Executed by hanging just last week for possessing 41 grams of diamorphine.
Wow.
How can they have such prosperity with such a low tax rate and no natural resources?
Cheap foreign labour, long work hours, and a strategically important location.
https://medium.com/kampung-seaport/noises-of-a-modern-city-1...
"I have never known that Singapore. My Singapore is pragmatic and sensitive, one of enforced invisibility, reduced risk, minimum noise."
Faith in whatever god or adherence to whatever principle of "harmony" may personally describe an individual's pattern of being, it is the government towards which truly meaningful, actionable intercessions are made. No more noisy Calls To Prayer from these minarets! Instead we will have Calls To Politeness blare from the tallest metaphorical tower. For the successful "multi-"culture, that is god - that is harmony.
Unfortunately, while your zeal is appreciated, "your culture will be erased" is a dangerous, panic-inducing way to say what you mean. To help encourage successful, peaceful discourse and assimilation, let no more of your spittle accidentally hit the floor with this aggressive rhetoric.
Now you have to ask why that is, right? My guess would be the law & order mentality of the state.
what ratio isn't strange?
Disneyland with the Death Penalty is a pretty self-explanatory magazine article which has somehow ended up with a more detailed summary than many of Gibson's novels. Only on Wikipedia would that sort of prioritisation be normal.
perhaps if you addressed your concerns to their prioritization committee, you could effect some change.
I miss magazines. I rarely read them now, but there was something exciting about browsing through a new issue - the ads were as interesting as the editorial material. In the best magazines, each page flip was a masterpiece of graphic design. In our collective transition to online content, we definitely lost a lot in terms of the visual language developed for print. Though we have high resolution screens now, it doesn't seem to be returning. The visual innovations seems to have complete moved to video now, and "pages" are now just scrolling text.
Amusingly, I signed up for ACM recently to get access to a research paper, and they unexpectedly mailed me their monthly magazine. An actual physical printed periodical? Wow. As I was reading it, I realized I've become so used to digital screens, it felt weird to read. You have to move your eyes up and down columns! They don't just scroll into my line of vision. Figures and images are numbered and you have to look around for them, they're not just embedded in a carousel in line with the text. Took me a minute or two to adjust for real.
and then
> The U.S. also limits foreign control of its media.
Beyond an attempt at a what aboutism, I'm not sure how these two statements are really connected. Just because Xinhua can't purchase Foxnews (which is ironically controlled by an Australian), the USA government lacks the legal power to ban anything except maybe child porn.
This isn’t what-about-ism — I am defending Singapore’s practice of banning foreign media that decides to have a say in how the country should be run.
I much prefer being somewhere that has everything- grimey to super nice and flashy. Makes life more interesting and there are more opportunities.
The psychological trait of Orderliness definitely plays into both the aesthetic qualities and the deference to authority within a society.
I prefer the clean and flashy aesthetic to a grimey one, but I probably prefer a more natural, organic aesthetic to either.
While I think many politically right-leaning people (like myself) see a lot to admire in Singapore, my own response is more measured. Like you noted, the authoritarian nature of such a state can come across as paternalistic, whereas I would rather be treated as an autonomous adult.
Gosh, I wonder why that would be a hard reputation to get rid of?