There are diverse countries that have similar levels of safety like Singapore.
If your government sucks, laws are poorly enforced or even maliciously enforced - there is low trust among the people, no respect for public spaces and no one follows the social norms.
I say today, the base economic situation of the people and the disparity of wealth is a bigger factor to what makes a country -overall safe or unsafe, which is what the thread is about and what I was replying to.
Safety first.
When measured by things like access to good education, infrastructure, housing, things look more equal.
A big temper to any real authoritarian tendencies in Singapore is that it's easy for our inhabitants to vote with their feet: people can and do leave. Thanks to some special diplomatic deals, Singaporeans have special access to working visas for the US, too. So Singapore can only be as authoritarian as McDonald's: there's no vote for what goes onto a Big Mac, but if you don't like it, you can always go to Burger King.
I'm a big fan of subsidiarity and local decisions making, exactly so that when people vote with their feet, they don't have to travel too far to get meaningful change.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
It sounds like a boring, middle-of-the-road principle; but it gives you such radical sounding conclusions as 'a federal minimum wage is bonkers, why couldn't the counties (or even cities) handle that issue by themselves?'
The freedom to shit on the street in San Francisco shouldn't be a freedom that is valued At all.
Authoritarian 'harmony' doesn't imply any sort of longevity.
All of these problems occur because the US values individual freedoms over central authority. You will note:
Freedom doesn't imply any sort of longevity Either.
The problem with the west is that freedom is viewed as a sort of moral truth.
People assume that an authoritarian society is bad and that a society with freedom is good.
The truth is far more complex. What I say is an aspect of the truth, as is what you say.
What truly should absolutely never be conflated is the idea that one of these truths overrides the other.
A lot of the modern emphasis on explaining away people's behaviour as an inevitable outcome of their poverty/race/culture/history (depending on who you ask) is a leading cause of a lot of the problems we see imho.
One of the core beliefs our society is based on is that God gave us free will so we can make choices. While some degree of corrective was maybe necessary as current and historical wrongs do impact us today, it has gone too far imo. Someone at some point of time has to break a cycle by making a choice to be a better person.
Singapore routinely cracks down on any sort of “racial disharmony” and has zero issues with race based rules like banning public drinking in Little India.
The government fully admits the racial mix creates unique problems they always have to be on top of.
Chiang Mai in Thailand also seemed safe and trustworthy when I was there a few months ago: eg the locals casually left stuff outside and on their motorbikes, petty theft of unattended items seems to be no problem.
Our neighbour Malaysia seems to have more problems with these issues. Looking into the causes of the differences between countries would be interesting. I suspect in Singapore our development is at least partially the result of deliberate social engineering by LKY.
I can also tell you that after 40 years of 'actually existing socialism' vs 'social market economy', that East Germany had markedly lower trust and safety than West Germany. And the wounds still haven't healed. Switzerland has even higher trust.
You can see similar gaps in Taiwan/Hong Kong vs mainland China.
Any examples for this statement?