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Comment by d_burfoot | Hacker News Reader

The modern equivalent of the Netherlands is Singapore. SG has better public policies, in every area, than any Western country. As a result they are much richer, have far less crime, better education, incomparably better infrastructure, better health care, etc, etc.

Countries by PPP per capita (131K vs 75K for US): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Countries by homicide rate (0.2 vs 6.5 in US): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

PISA rankings by country (SG tops all categories, far above US): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...

Life expectancy by country (83 yrs vs 77 for US): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

Countries ranked by infrastructure quality (SG tops): https://www.statista.com/statistics/264753/ranking-of-countr...

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Singapore is a city, let's not pretend we can compare it with countries proper. If you compare it with affluent cities, it's great but not as great as the stats would say. And when it comes to governance, let's not forget that Singapore is a dictatorship.

A benevolent dictatorship is, while it lasts, arguably the ideal form of government. The problem is that they tend to descend into malevolent dictatorships given enough time.

A benevolent dictatorship isn’t a form of government: it is only a dictatorship, but with a leader that is somehow deemed less bad for his people than most dictatorships out there.

I'd rather not live in a police state, and I think I speak for many Americans when I say that. Singapore can kind of get away with it because it is so small, but we can see what it looks like when scaled to a large country by looking at Modern China. I'll take some crime and something less than stellar education, as a national average, than have to contend with a government who welds people in their apartments, creates "reeducation camps" for minorities, and disappears business leaders.

Has Singapore government evwr welded people on their apsrtments? What is thw basis for this comparison?

Why would providing better education in America lead to people being welded into their apartment? Is freedom only possible with incompetwnt governance?

Author Leopold Kohr's twentieth century books argued that bigness and scaling are a major problem for freedom, and so insoluble that it's better not to keep attempting to manage bigness. Riversflow was arguing here, correct me if I'm wrong, that some nations find it insoluble to unwind various kinds of bigness, and that none of those nations can make an attempt to emulate a nation that has managed its society without the scale factor at which they, USA included, already exist.

In college I had a friend from Singapore. After graduation he felt his plight was that he wasn't an American and he was no longer Singaporesse<sp?>. He was unable to land a job in America and had to go back to Singapore. He was sad.

“China is Singapore but bigger” is kind of a bizarre take. If you don’t like Singapore’s policies fine, but randomly equating them to China seems overly simplistic.

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