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Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

I consider Singapore less than ideal to live in, but not because some websites are blocked. While free speech and access to information is almost always a good thing, people raised with western values should not overlook that the east does things a little differently; not all countries started from the same place and lifting people out of hardship is the primary goal. As they prosper (as Singapore did), it'd be good if priorities are realigned and they become more open. But it's a process and it takes time.

Now the second part. Singapore has some barbaric laws incompatible with modern society. Many times a year, they put to death people for drug related offenses (even cannabis), almost always poor people. It is tragic and heart breaking that such a wealthy country with a well-educated population (80% supporting death for drug offenses) gets behind execution for non-violent crimes. Most recently - 6 weeks back Tangaraju Suppiah was put to death for carrying 2 pounds of cannabis [1].

It's a well manicured garden, but I'd stay away from that place. Especially if you're raising kids.

[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/25/asia/singapore-cannabis-e...

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> Tangaraju Suppiah

He was a kingpin dealer who manipulated others into trafficking drugs, not just some poor guy who was unwittingly forced or tricked into carrying cannabis. His pawns, forced into doing his bidding, were spared the death penalty.

I personally don't think marijuana is harmful, but if you're going to be intentionally running a network distributing drugs knowing full well the law, there is really nobody to blame but yourself.

> Especially if you're raising kids

There is no better place to be raising kids to be honest. Singapore boasts a world-class education that consistently ranks at or near the top of the OECD PISA scores, a rich culture with both Eastern and Western perspectives. My Singaporean colleagues (here in the Bay Area) are all outstanding people with both a fine grasp of technical matters and great creativity and critical thinking skills.

Until recently it was illegal to be gay in Singapore. I wouldn’t that “a western perspective”. Btw the army still classify homosexuality as a mental illness when they assess recruits for conscription.

As for the educational system, university is very expensive. Schools are free and yes they claim to be very good on academic scores. What they don’t tell you is they still do caning in public schools (boys only). Still stuck in the fifties. The educational system largely focuses on academic strength and if you are not academically strong you get put into a second tier system very quickly. Kids as young as 8 have exams and suffer from exam stress early in their life.

So yes, Singapore is an iron fisted, draconian police state, not much better than their Chinese neighbours.

Source: I live here.

I went to school in Singapore too.

Yes, there is caning, but only for very serious offences. They no longer cane kids just for being late (which was done to Lee Kuan Yew, though he mentioned in his memoir that "it never did me any harm").

Homosexuality is technically illegal (to be precise, the act of sex between men), but it is rarely enforced and most people don't mind it, especially the younger generation which tend to support LGBT strongly.

Sex between men is not illegal (even technically) in Singapore anymore since Nov. 2022.

Thanks, I'm out of date it seems.

>Until recently it was illegal to be gay in Singapore.

Not that long ago it was in many parts of the west too. Could get you fired from work, There were still gays in both places of course, both closeted and people everybody knew they were gay.

Hell, up until the 60s there was seggregation of blacks and whites.

>There is no better place to be raising kids to be honest.

I lived in Singapore for over 10 years and have 3 kids. Singapore is incredibly safe, it's fantastic a place for starting and raising a young family. You get a lot of exposure to people from all over the world.

On the other hand, it's actually "too" safe. Locals are sheltered, often making absurd comparisons that neighboring Malaysia / Johor Bahru is some crime ridden warzone, where you take your life into your hands by crossing the border. People file police reports over their food being overly seasoned at restaurants.

IMO raising a child over the long term in the bubble is detrimental as they wind up lacking street smarts which are necessary basically anywhere outside of Singapore.

100% agreed on the best place to raise kids. World class education that is so cheap that no one ever even needs to take a student loan. The universities are among worlds top in rankings.

Another factor: Safety - I doubt there is a safer country than Singapore.

That’s why they send their kids to the UK?

> As they prosper (as Singapore did), it'd be good if priorities are realigned and they become more open.

There’s a lot of arrogance in this statement. The prosperous Asian countries (Singapore, Korea, Japan, maybe UAE too) all have more restricted social freedoms. But they’re also the safest and most orderly places in the world. Why would anybody living in those places look at LA, or NY, or Paris, or London, and think “I want where I live to be more like that”, ya know, filthy and full of violent and property crime…

Maybe they are a little different from the hive mind? I know a Japanese guy who left because he was gay and didn't want to become a salary man.

There’s hundreds of millions of people in those countries. I’m sure they have all sorts of views. It’s the presumption people in developed economies are going to naturally start adopting western values that I’m taking issue with. It’s a highly arrogant position, that seems to lack any form of awareness about how western countries might be perceived by people outside the west.

> Singapore has some barbaric laws incompatible with modern society. Many times a year, they put to death people for drug related offenses (even cannabis), almost always poor people.

Nothing to do with people being poor. Majority of those executed are foreigners coming into the country.

https://youtu.be/-PXAOZwvv04

You can argue cannabis is harmless but that’s simply not true. Most studies that look at long term usage conclude it affects the brain.

> You can argue cannabis is harmless but that’s simply not true. Most studies that look at long term usage conclude it affects the brain.

Let's assume this is true. Nobody is saying they needn't be punished, but put them to death?

> https://youtu.be/-PXAOZwvv04

LKY says in the video: "In America they're changing their minds and sending people back to the death row." Yeah, but not for this.

No one is put to death for personal use. Only if you possess large enough quantities that makes you a dealer peddling typically peddling cannabis to large groups of people including underage kids.

I personally don't believe in death penalty and I hope it's abolished entirely. But facts needs to be stated with clarity.

Also Lee Kwan Yew is a legend. An absolute hero for bringing this country to where it is today. This is just my personal opinion, probably unpopular, but let me be free to state what I feel.

And to add - as of 2013 - laws have changed, death penalty rules are changing. Not changing fast enough, but changing. Hopefully they abolish it entirely asap.

> Let's assume this is true. Nobody is saying they needn't be punished, but put them to death?

There’s warning before you get off the plane. Warnings when you get off the plane. Warnings when you go through customs.

That’s not an argument for the death penalty. Are you saying that it’s ok to kill people for whatever reason as long as they’re informed?

> for whatever reason

But there's a very specific reason here, and it's easy to avoid.

You know what else affects the brain in a negative way? Execution.

Don’t do drugs then, simple way of avoiding both negative consequences

Nah, I can do drugs without my government executing me. It's cool, unlike murder.

> Most studies that look at long term usage conclude it affects the brain.

I take it then you're also in favour of the death penalty for alcohol consumption, distribution, and production then?

It would certainly be hypocritical if that were not the case.

Almost any type of contact sport too. Martial arts, boxing, football, all proven to cause permanent damage even when protection is worn.

Sports are virtuous, drunkenness is not.

Brain damage is virtuous to those that are probably brain damaged.

“One bad thing is too deeply rooted in society to remove, so we have to accept a different bad thing and allow it to take root?”

Alcohol and tobacco are empirically worse than cannabis, which is just as rooted in society. The choices of what is legal and what isn't came down to class and politics, not medical evidence.

So yes? Acceptance, regulation and social safety nets are probably the way to go for a lot of drugs. The alternative is to indefinitely fight an unwinnable war, to perpetuate a cycle of death and murder seemingly oblivious that the fight itself and the consequences of a punitive system are the things taking most of those lives, not the drugs.

Opposition to cannabis use is deeper than “class and politics.” Its use was opposed by Islam 800 years ago. But who cares if the reason for the differential treatment is cultural rather than medical? Why do we need to normalize additional vices, on top of the ones we already have?

The war against drug use is not “unwinnable” for a disciplined society. There are many countries in the world that still manage to keep alcohol out of the hands of most people. In my home country, 95% of people report never having used alcohol or tobacco: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6349140.

95% of people will say a lot of things when they have a gun pointed to their head.

There is no gun to anyone’s head—in particular, tobacco use is neither illegal nor considered immoral, but people don’t smoke anyway. I know it shocks Americans to learn that people can exercise self control and refrain from vices.

I'm not an American, but Australian.

If that's the comment that you wish to make then by all means do so.

Adding quotes and a question mark makes it appear is if you are paraphrasing the comment that I made which I'd kindly ask you not to do as I can speak for myself and that's not what I stated.

if harmful/harmless were the real test, the government would ban alcohol. But that’s not the real reason. Just like drug laws everywhere, it’s more about controlling a certain demographic of the population (i.e. poor people)

The fact that people in singapore still equate marijuana use to “harmful” “mind altering” “bad drugs” becomes more and more ridiculous as it gets legalized elsewhere. We’ll see what happens with thailand. As if for some reason asians can’t be allowed marijuana while it’s fine for white people.

They ban you drinking in public places. People used to drink on the bridge at Clark quay but that’s banned now. There’s less out of control people there now.

Alcohol can only be purchased during certain hours.

but alcohol actually kills people, unlike weed. and causes actual long-term damage, physical dependence, etc. just admit that the reason your country permits alcohol and executes weed smugglers is because alcohol is part of your culture and weed isn't.

Weed has long term damage. It’s easy to make alcohol at home. It’s not easy to grow weed at home. But keep trying.

Literally everything "affects the brain"

Do you drink coffee?

In typical dang authoritarian fashion I’m rate limited because discussion and opinions are censored on HN.

> While free speech and access to information is almost always a good thing, people raised with western values should not overlook that the east does things a little differently

"'The East' does not respect freedom of thought" is a sentiment one would be castigated for expressing in the West.

Singapore executes a dozen people per year. Trafficking, not consumption results in the death penalty. If that is barbaric, do you know that a hundred people per day in the US die of opioid overdoses? How many people are in prison for drug related crimes in other developed countries? How many families are ruined by drugs?

Singapore has made its rules clear, these punishments aren't arbitrary. If you bring drugs into a country that will sentence you to death for it, something the population supports, that's not barbarism on part of Singapore, it's just reckless crime.

I will paraphrase LKY: it is more kind to execute one drug trafficker than allow him to destroy thousands of families.

I don't disagree with him.

Singapore is a society where one gives up freedom in exchange for material prosperity. It's a dead end for anyone who wants to grow.

Do you have personal anecdotes backing your claim?

> It was Singapore’s first execution in six months.

Not as common as you put it out to be.

> While free speech and access to information is almost always a good thing, people raised with western values should not overlook that the east does things a little differently; not all countries started from the same place and lifting people out of hardship is the primary goal

It’s deeper than that. Generally, asian cultures place a higher value on community and thus have a lower tolerance for antisocial behavior. That same communalism also means they tend to place a lower value on individual life. Hence death penalties for people engaging in antisocial behavior.

It might not be your cup of tea, but Asians tend to think that their “well manicured garden” is desirable. In my view it’s far better than say San Francisco—the embodiment of European individualism taken to its logical conclusion—where you’re stepping over needles and human feces to get to work.

San Francisco isn't the embodiment of European individualism, it is the embodiment of American mismanagement.

It’s mismanagement that arises out of European individualism. Because the individual is sacrosanct, you can’t infringe on individual “rights” like doing drugs or sleeping in parks. You can’t throw them in prison or execute the people facilitating antisocial behavior, like drug dealers. Simultaneously, no value is accorded to the collective right to a clean and orderly commons, free from antisocial behavior.

That just not true, there are a lot of places which value European individualism in the US or outside of it where drugs problems are on the same level as in Asian countries.

Such as?

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-use-...

Looking at the map I think you'll see for yourself your point doesn't stand.

So what I'm seeing is Africa/Asia with the lowest drug use, continental europe with significantly higher drug use, the Anglo countries (which are more individualistic than continental Europe) even higher, and the U.S. (which carries western individualism to the greatest extreme) at the top of the charts. There seems to be something weird going on with the former Soviet bloc countries, but overall the chart seems to strongly support the trend I'm talking about.

Russia, Myanmar, Mongolia, UAE, Belarus are all significantly worse then almost all of the European countries (only Estonia is worse). I wouldn't consider those countries more individualistic than Germany for example. Vietnam and South Korea are at same levels as most of central/western Europe. India and Italy are also similar. There simply isn't any correlation (a formula if you will) between how individualistic a society is and how much drug abuse it has.

I actually think dysfunction in SF is not a result of European individualism. The situation is not best explained by individual vs collective rights. Rather, I think the dysfunction is deliberate and the politicians who control the city are part of a party and belief that repudiates anything European.

For example, the city of SF will come down on you like a ton of bricks if you are not from the correct demographic. There is a lawsuit where white police officers are suing the city for denying them promotions and a system of racial discrimination. What about their individual rights? Another example is how the city and state protect homeless encampments but make it difficult for regular people to build homes or other buildings. Or how homeless people and drug addicts attack and harass regular people and the city does nothing about it but it was up in arms when a former fire chief allegedly attacked a homeless person.

Individualism isn't broadly accepted, rather it seems the homeless have more rights than anyone else. This isn't individualism and shows that there is a ideology driving the dysfunction.

I would step over a needle or three to save someone from execution for drug use.

Why?

Assuming this is a good faith question I'll broaden the scope a little. I think the spectrum we're working on here is basically: "society is more important than the individual" and "the individual is more important than society", or more concretely: "society exists to serve the individual" and "the individual exists to serve society".

I'd like to avoid debating the extremes, but I think the example of "I'm not willing to put up with a San Francisco level of sanitation, public drug use, and petty crime in lieu of executing users of drugs, including marijuana" is a pretty extreme position. I think it's clear that marijuana doesn't pose the same societal risk as other illegal (in the US) drugs like cocaine, meth, and opiates, or even other legal drugs like alcohol and nicotine, so I don't think using it merits execution: the most severe penalty we impose.

Maybe the weed thing is a red herring, so I'll include users of drugs that do pose a significant societal risk. It's well established that drug use is a pathology and addiction is a disease, and that severe penalties have had little effect in discouraging use. US drug policy has failed its (facial) goals of:

- reduce economic dependence of foreign countries on drug production

- reduce domestic drug consumption

- reduce drug violence

(The starkest example of 3 has been the unrelenting violence in Chicagoland, which conservatives attribute to a failure of liberal governance, but which is a clear failing of national US drug and gun policy.)

Or, put another way, I would hope that if a US administration learned that in 2024 a drug would be released on the market that would have all the effects that the War on Drugs has had (overdose deaths, mass incarceration and surveillance via parole, violence in foreign countries, the HIV epidemic, domestic gang violence) we would act with some urgency to suppress it, but we're actively supporting it to the tune of ~$47B a year.

I think the policy position you're advocating is to ramp up the War on Drugs, your evidence is that execution for even minor drug offenses stops drug use as shown in Singapore. This is a pretty common conservative position: if we executed drug dealers--and maybe even drug users--we'd solve the drug problem in the US. The problem is we're soft.

My belief here is that would lead to the execution of many, many Black people and children. Lots of kids use drugs! I did and my friends did. Lots of gangs use kids in the drug trade. There's huge overlap between users and sellers of drugs. I and my friends also did this. This is a hard problem, I don't think the US is a society that will tolerate executing kids, but you will absolutely see gangs pressing children even more into service with these policies (just like they do with other vulnerable groups like women and immigrants).

So from my point of view, the War on Drugs has failed and not because it didn't go far enough, but because its core conceit was flawed: laws are not effective deterrents. Conservatives really want to think they are, but they are not. They don't even work on educated perpetrators of white collar crime who usually don't even need the money, they certainly don't work on the people in the organized drug trade.

Conversely, we've seen success in treatment programs. It's certainly not perfect and there's more work to do, but Portugal is a pretty good example of where this has worked (Oregon is an example where it hasn't, but I think they're starting to rethink how they're getting people into treatment--currently it's entirely voluntary and that dynamic is inadequate).

So to come full circle to our society vs. individual here. I think your position is "we must sacrifice individuals who fall prey to drugs and thus become a drag on society for the good of society." My position is "society must help individuals who've fallen prey to drugs so they don't become a drag on society." This is because following your position to its conclusion likely means ratcheting up the War on Drugs--a policy that has failed expensively and beyond doubt--and following my position to its conclusion pursues treatment and decriminalization, an approach that's shown success at least sometimes. I also believe there are fundamental human rights issues when it comes to incarceration (especially given the rates of violence in the US carceral system) and execution, and it's hard for me to accept that drug use merits either of those punishments.

> So from my point of view, the War on Drugs has failed and not because it didn't go far enough, but because its core conceit was flawed: laws are not effective deterrents. Conservatives really want to think they are, but they are not.

Laws can be effective deterrents, when they serve to reinforce social norms. Singapore, China, etc., execute drug dealers to reinforce the social norm that drug use and trafficking are so bad that they warrant the death penalty. That social norm, in turn, prevents drug use and drug dealing. A street dealer might not be worried about getting caught by the state (the law might not have a deterrent effect in that sense) but they do worry about becoming socially ostracized. When laws and social norms are combined like that, you can reduce drug use. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-use-.... In the U.S., people lose almost 7 healthy years of life on average to drug use. In my home country of Bangladesh (which executes drug dealers) it's under 0.8.

The problem with American conservatives is that they're compromised by libertarianism. They'll pass the law, but they won't fight for the culture. So you end up with a situation where there is a "drug war" on the books, but where the culture is glorifying drug use and drug dealing. In that situation, the law cannot work, because the social norm is not there. It's not enough to just execute drug dealers. You must become a culture that executes drug dealers.

> In the U.S., people lose almost 7 healthy years of life on average to drug use. In my home country of Bangladesh (which executes drug dealers) it's under 0.8.

There's so much ambiguity here. While Japan has a staunchly anti-drug culture and severe legal and social penalties for drug use, they don't execute drug users or dealers, and they have a lower DALY of 0.6. By your argument it should be higher. Singapore's is way higher at 1.1. If Japan was considering an execution policy, you could argue against it by saying "it seems like if you execute drug dealers, DALYs increase, and potentially even double".

It's also important to note that this dataset also considers alcohol use, and Bangladesh is a dry country for Muslims (AFAIK). That's a pretty big skew.

> You must become a culture that executes drug dealers.

Again I don't think the data show that this would be effective, but also this isn't responsive to my point: you'll kill a lot of people, disproportionately kids, women, immigrants, minorities, and poor people. Americans assume that drug laws and task forces are geared towards dismantling drug operations, but this is entirely false. The vast majority of people picked up for drug offenses are very low level. We're not arresting and incarcerating criminal masterminds, we're getting people who are coerced one way or another into pushing drugs.

It's also worth saying this is pretty dangerous work on its own! Many people in the drug trade assume they'll die "on the job". It strains credulity to think that the threat of execution would really factor into their decision making here.

Finally, a War on Drugs approach doesn't even work in Singapore. Here are some samples from their 2021 report [0] (emphasis mine):

- the proportion of new drug abusers arrested remained high at 34%

- the proportion of new drug abusers arrested who were under 30 years old remained significant at 60%

- In 2021, CNB arrested 2,724 drug abusers

- CNB made significant drug seizures in 2021. The drugs seized in 2021 were estimated to have a street value of about S$18.16 million. There was a 31% increase in seizures of heroin to 95.45kg in 2021, from 72.70kg in 2020. Cannabis seizures saw a 144% increase to 105.18kg in 2021, from 43.10kg in 2020. Seizures of crystalline methamphetamine (more commonly known as ‘Ice’) saw a 3% increase to 48.11kg in 2021, from 46.81kg in 2020.

I don't want to give a false impression, these aren't huge numbers, but they're pretty big for a country who says, "Singapore is winning the war on drugs" [1]. But we should also note that Singapore doesn't really execute that many people for drug-related offenses, it's < 50 over the last 10 years [2]. But if we ratio that to the population of the US, it's something like 3,000 executions a year. That would be a huge increase in the number of executions in the US annually, which is ~20/year. A 15,000% increase in executions is... well I guess it depends on your point of view. Another comparison is that it would be a 9/11 in executions every year.

And you can't say these numbers would go down! Singapore's had this policy since the early 70s. Actually I think what would happen is our numbers in the US wouldn't ratio to Singapore's after ~50 years of this policy, they'd ratio to when it started which--while I can't find a source--I assume was way, way higher.

---

I think the truth here is that, like most things, the US is just a super weird outlier. The site you linked shows drug use in the US that's basically off the charts. If our reluctance to punish drug dealers is the cause, you'd expect the Nordic countries to have a way worse problem, but they don't. Hell you'd expect heavy drug-producing countries to have a way worse problem, but they also don't. I just don't see any evidence that harsher penalties for dealing drugs will improve the situation, on the other hand I have every reason to think it will be yet another horror visited upon the most vulnerable Americans by our carceral system.

[0]: https://www.cnb.gov.sg/docs/default-source/drug-situation-re...

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/singapore-is-winning...

[2]: https://data.gov.sg/dataset/judicial-executions

Edit: miscalculated; the US has 60x the population of Singapore, not 6x.

> that the east does things a little differently

Give the history a look and you'll know why.

Unlike in Europe where people choose to unite and live largely peacefully after many conflicts (2 world wars got people fed up especially quickly), Asian countries landed themselves in a different situation, and reasonably suspicious towards "outsiders". What makes things even worse is that due to how many of these countries are governed (dictatorships, monarchies, monoparties and fake democracies), the recent movement of globalization is less effective in terms of bringing enough benefits to their citizens to allow them to brainwash their old world views out of their head voluntarily.

Plus, many of these Asian countries don't have enough market ability to support the development of such Internet product domestically. As a result, if you just fully open up your Internet, the majority of the benefit from the action will then be absorbed by some companies located half an earth away while continue to deplete the market demand for homegrown alternatives. This is the situation where when you fully obey the international treaties, you lose.

So, all and all, it's not "the east (just) does things a little differently" ("argh, these uncivilized barbarians" probably follows). Some delicate and sophisticated calculation is involved there.

> Plus, many of these Asian countries don't have enough market ability to support the development of such Internet product domestically. As a result, if you just fully open up your Internet, the majority of the benefit from the action will then be absorbed by some companies located half an earth.

It's not facebook.com that's blocked. It's BBC.com and other news sites.

None of the big companies you're talking about are significantly blocked (outside of China).

Meanwhile there's quite a few homegrown internet companies doing great over here.

Here in Vietnam, shopee.com and lazada.com are the most popular shopping sites.

Zalo is the most popular messaging app by far.

Grab is the most popular ride sharing and food delivery app (in Indonesia it's Gojek).

The only American companies that do have dominance are FB for social media and Google for search. Although maybe TikTok is more popular now.

Shopee and Lazada are both owned/run by Chinese. As is obviously Tiktok. Grab by Malaysians.

What do you mean by 'home grown'?

In Thailand, bbc.com is not blocked, but asiasentinel.com is (never visited it, don't know what I'm missing...)

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