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Comment by OkayPhysicist | Hacker News Reader

Singapore is an odd country. The only country, to my knowledge, that had independence thrust upon it without its consent. Extremely prosperous compared to its neighbors. An autocratic, single party state where the government is so popular that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices. One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their military has barely been used.

What would you even call their socioeconomic system? They're not exactly doing neoliberal capitalism, their government is far too involved for that. They're not socialist, they've got free enterprise galore. The autocracy+militarization+heavily meddled with big business thing most resembles fascist states, but without the typical racist scapegoating (on the contrary, they've put a frankly inordinate amount of effort into preventing racial infighting).

In most countries "The country also passed a new law earlier this year that would allow the police to control the bank accounts of individuals who they suspect to be scam targets and limit what transactions they can do." would probably set off alarm bells, but it does seem like business as usual in Singapore.

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>that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices

I don't believe this is true. If you're talking about Non-Constituency Members of Parliament, they are consolation prizes given to best losers, and there are many things they cannot vote on. Moreover, the ruling party almost never lifts the party whip, i.e. members of the party CANNOT vote against the party line (without being kicked out of the party, which results in them being kicked out of parliament). In other words, since the ruling party already has a majority, any opposing votes literally do not matter.

If you aren't talking about the NCMP scheme, then I do not know what you're talking about, as the ruling party does institute policies that are beneficial for the incumbent party.

I’ve never been there but whenever I read something about it I get the vibe that they’re an HOA with a military.

Not really.

They are famous for having a lot of rules, but the instances where they really go wild are when someone has been particularly egregious.

For the most part it is just insanely materialistic as the main downside.

Most of the "harsh" rules make a tremendous amount of sense when you actually go there. Yeah, gum and spitting are illegal, and that is a good thing in a city as crowded as that with a significant population from countries where spitting is customary. Take an overnight train in China, and you will come to discover that you too appreciate a place where people can't just hork one up at will.

To put it into perspective, SG is one of the rare tier 1 cities where you can get a Michelin meal from a street vendor (literally), after engaging the services of a prostitute, and drinking a beer in public. It isn't nearly as uptight as an HOA.

> Yeah, gum […] illegal […]

This trope, long exhausted and repeatedly regurgitated, persists despite the reality having shifted considerably.

In truth, chewing gum has been legally obtainable in Singapore for a long time and is available for purchase through local pharmacies.

Barbaric justice systems never make sense, they're just the last resort of the incompetent.

William Gibson got a lifetime ban for calling it "Disney with the death penalty" in a Wired article.

That's really interesting, because the Disney comparison could only be considered positive, and the death penalty thing is strictly speaking a fact and public knowledge.

https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ | https://archive.today/twY5Y

If you haven't, go read "The Singapore Story" https://annas-archive.org/md5/6578558e0416e264a39da0448003ec... If you're bored, skip to the Japanese invasion Chapter and then read on. Many unique things happened in Singapore to make Singapore, Singapore.

What would you even call their socioeconomic system?

Pure authoritarianism.

And yet the average Singaporean is freer economically, socially, and ideologically.

No freedom of press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, government owns/operates roughly ⅓ of the economy that features many state monopolies, the PAP maintains a gerrymandered control over the electorate, criticizing the government lands you in court for defamation and conveniently bankrupts can't run for parliament.

Singapore is many things but not none of what you've written.

Singaporeans have insanely high quality of life and high pride in their system and people. They have an immense number of negative freedoms that the average person across the world could only dream of: freedom from violence, freedom from the devastating effects of drug addiction on families and society, freedom from poverty, freedom from corruption, freedom from instability. For the average person looking to raise a family, build a quality life, and just live well, Singapore is the perfect social contract. Don't like it? They have the most powerful or second most powerful passport in the world and can move anywhere else they see fit, yet they see their country as the best place they could be

Singaporeans have chosen economic security and social authoritarianism over the freedoms we enjoy in the West. That's their choice.

A powerful passport doesn't mean they can move anywhere to live permanently and if they choose to become a citizen of the country they do move to then they will lose their Singaporean citizenship.

Most western European countries are as restrictive on speech as Singapore but are just dishonest.

American freedom of expression is a singular achievement.

I don’t agree with that assessment at all. I’m free to criticise my government in the UK in any way I wish to. I would have no such freedom in Singapore.

As long as you are not criticizing the UK.gov's stance on Palestine.

The proscribing of Palestine Action as a 'terrorist group" is an absolute farce but that doesn't prevent you criticising the governments position on Palestine.

> I’m free to criticise my government in the UK in any way I wish to.

As someone who moved from Singapore to the UK, this assessment is really quite funny. The Online Safety Act says hello.

My point is they see themselves as having more freedoms than the west does in places that matter to their daily life: freedom from poverty, violent crime, the devastating effects of drugs on families, social chaos, and corruption. To Singaporeans, these are real freedoms. They’d much rather have that quality of life than live in homeless-infested cities with drugs where they can at least criticize the government.

It’s not one or the other. There are plenty of societies that meet the bar you describe without the restrictions Singapore has in place.

So it's like Europe but ten times better.

Most countries are going to fall flat compared to the United States. Singapore is pretty amazing.

> What would you even call their socioeconomic system?

China economically functions similarly to Singapore, with long documented connections and explicit emulation. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping already began this and hundreds of thousands of Chinese officials and leaders were trained there and in industrial parks with the explicit goal of knowledge sharing with the dream of "planting 1000 Singapores". [0, 1, 2, 3]

> fascist states, but without the typical racist scapegoating

Tangential, but Hitler added racism; Mussolini, Salazar, Franco/de Rivera (who used large Arab and Berber forces fighting the Republicans in Spain) etc. had none of that (until Hitler forced Mussolini's hand in 1938). Brazilian integralists and many other fascisms also weren't racially based.

[0] https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3042046/does... [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24761028.2021.1... [2] https://www.fairobserver.com/economics/china-and-its-mentor-... [3] https://www.thinkchina.sg/politics/construction-singapore-mo...

Eh, that's giving Mussolini more credit than he deserves. A core component of his platform was conquering swathes of Africa on colonial grounds.

It isn't "racist scapegoating" to conquer places in Africa, because it's not blaming some race for internal problems.

That has nothing to do with fascism as you may not be aware but Italy started fighting colonial wars well before WW1 and the other hard on colonialists were all democracies.

You might want to freshen up your history lessons with maybe some less revisionist sources, because Mussolini-wise I have some bad news for you.

I'm not defending any of those people. Mussolini was a monster who used gas in Ethiopia and many other things, yes. But that wasn't the topic. Fascist Italy didn't do "racist scapegoating" and blame internal problems on people of other races.

Italy's favorite scapegoat was almost always Britain and the UN's predecessor.

Then deliver the news and have constructive discussions.

For what it's worth is well accepted among most fascism historians that racism, at least in the sense of adopting racial laws and such came late, and mostly as a byproduct of the German alliance.

As for what did Italy do itself before that, if you're referring to the wars in Africa, that has nothing to do with fascism, and the two biggest colonial powers at the time were both very sane democracies.

And this is why I can't take anyone's fascism definition seriously. Those definitions are contradictory, and include and exclude governments that don't deserve it. Especially when they try to imply that X = fascist = bad guy. If I heard about Umberto Eco one more time!!

On top of that: I'm sick of people writing fascism when they mean dictatorship.

As best I understand it fascism originally described a sort of reverse socialism, I mean realistically it was socialist, it was after the same end goals as socialist policy, but it achieved them in the opposite manner, Where socialism seeks to balance corporate power usually by increased regulation and control of the corporations which has the side effect of incorporating them into the state. fascism seeks to balance state power by having corporations run the state. Which is the same end result, the corporations are incorporated into the state.

But any way you swing it fascism did not stand for that very long and now days usually is intended to mean a police or military state. Or more often because nobody knows what fascism is but everyone knows that it is objectively bad it is what you call your political opponent. case closed, argument won.

You can't have any authoritarian government labeled as fascist if:

- it lacks the reactionary qualities of fascism: ideological rejections of liberal democracy, rationalism, and it's equal distance from capitalism and socialism.

- it lacks the revolutionary qualities: the centrality of the creation of a new man, the overthrowing of institutions through total mobilization (not just military, but the entire society)

- it lacks the expansionist, colonialist, ethnic-and-cultural focuses of fascisms

Under this light, there is one, and only one other government that chased the same revolutionary and reactionary ideologies, nazi Germany, with a distant second one being imperial Japan.

Spain, Chile, Argentina, Portugal are (very, very) distant thirds.

And even the distant thirds often lack the fascist qualities:

- Pinochet's came from a coup, not from a movement. It had none of the revolutionary or reactionary qualities of fascism.

- Spain's Franco outright rejected overt fascism starting already since ww2 and purged its own party from fascist elements, instead embracing a more classical combination of nationalism-monarchy-religion authoritarian regime.

- Argentina's Peronism allowed both for elections, dissent and lacked any expansionist or totalitarian ambitions.

- Salazar's Portugal outright refused mass-mobilization and the revolutionary dynamism of fascism. It exalted obedience and order, not conquest and transformation.

> But any way you swing it fascism did not stand for that very long

It absolutely did, from start to the end of the regimes in all of Italy, Germany and Japan.

It could really just be the money.

> An autocratic, single party state where the government is so popular that they need to rig their elections against themselves to get dissenting voices.

It's not a single party state. Over 1/3rd of Singaporeans vote for the non-PAP candidates.

Their social system is familiar to anyone with an Asian family

> Singapore is an odd country

The reason you find it odd is because you really can't find another country that the citizen have such a high trust towards the government and let the government do (almost) anything they wanted, yet the government doesn't abuse this power (mostly, at least) and continue focus on long term benefits of the country (rather than short term gains because the political party need to survive the next election in few years time)

> One of the most militarized countries (#3 by military spending per capita) in the world, yet their military has barely been used.

Ther reason is quite simple: Singapore is a very small country and it is very easily to be invaded. The high military spending is more of a deterent.

> What would you even call their socioeconomic system?

It is very much a free market capitalism with some state intervention, similar to many other countries. If anything, I would say Singapore is more free market than many western countries due to the fact that the government is very pro-business as the country is heavily rely on foreign businesses to survive.

No need to abuse anything until shit hits the fan.

>What would you even call their socioeconomic system?

Asian Switzerland.

And if that offends anyone it ought to be the Swiss (and any fanboys they may have who take offense on their behalf).

How can such an authoritarian state be compared to Switzerland?

Hmm, a clean, safe, prosperous country with world class education, top medical facilities, a technocratic highly competent government, reasonable taxes, and a place that people like to come for vacation…I can see how this would offend people

I’ve heard lots of other places called “Asian Switzerland.” Bhutan, and and rural parts of Myanmar.

> What would you even call their socioeconomic system? They're not exactly doing neoliberal capitalism, their government is far too involved for that. They're not socialist, they've got free enterprise galore. The autocracy+militarization+heavily meddled with big business thing most resembles fascist states

It's just State Capitalism, isn't it? Like China. A market-based economy with free enterprise, but no illusions of egalitarianism or democracy, enables the state to step in and manage and direct the market with effective regulation. In a democracy the state can manage this for a time, but eventually a private entity or group of entities leverages their power to influence law and co-opt democratic power, so the market starts steering its own regulation and you end up with fascism as a means of population control or a Russia-style cleptocratic oligarchy. We have not yet figured out how to sustain democracy + capitalism, if it's even possible.

I worry that most will see the rise of countries like Singapore and China and the relative decline of the US/EU and conclude that democracy is a failed project all together.

China does have illusions of egalitarianism, though. They don't call themselves the "Communist" party without reason. And enterprise, to my understanding, is much, much freer in Singapore than it is in China.

I'm not saying democracy is a failed project all together, but something that has been on my mind a lot recently is that democracy is quite inefficient - where I'm from anyway (New Zealand). We are a small country, with general elections every four years. So most of the decisions our government takes a less bold, and optimized for short term interests and to get the next cycle vote. And when we have had times a government has made plans for a large infrastructure project, a successive government will come in and undo all of that planning.

For example, Auckland, our major economic hub, doesn't even have proper public transportation, and now citizens are battling with issues commuting to and from work.

I think part of Singapore's success has been it's ability to make bold decisions and see it through without worrying about short term election cycles.

You're pinning a people problem on democracy. If the people of New Zealand are happy being a little out of the way island that is a nice place for a holiday then that is what they'll be. If they want to be as economically prosperous as Singapore then they have to argue it out and get a critical mass of people to decide that they want to be wealthier in a take-concrete-actions sort of way. They can do that if they want and they don't need long term government projects to achieve it. There aren't that many people on the islands, it is a pretty homogeneous place and they don't need any help coordinating themselves.

You can come up with a government that does less well at giving people what they want (surprisingly easy to do) but the obvious downside of that is people will be getting less of what they want. For example I have little doubt New Zealanders would be incensed if government spending dropped to Singaporian levels.

But most New Zealander's aren't happy with the way things are. That's the point. That's why I used public transport as an example. Most working New Zealander's are unhappy about the public transport system, and always compare it to other major cities (Sydney, London, etc) and how we massively fall short. But the times where a government has tried to carry out the major work, it either gets reversed when a successive govt takes over, or the cost is too high for it to be palatable to decrease spending elsewhere to fund it.

You may say, well, democracy brings in the next government, and they're carrying out the policies that they campaigned for. But my point isn't that democracy is failing, it's the mechanisms. The 4 year term means even governments that do think a massive public transport overhaul is needed won't do it because cutting costs elsewhere to fund it will lead to losing the next term.

So I do partially agree with you in that it is ultimately a people problem. But short election cycles shape how those people's preferences are expressed and acted upon.

> The 4 year term means even governments that do think a massive public transport overhaul is needed won't do it because cutting costs elsewhere to fund it will lead to losing the next term.

Good? The point of democracy is for the government to do things that there is a consensus that it ought. No consensus, no action. If people would not vote for the policy then they government shouldn't do it.

You're describing a situation where most New Zealanders seem to be happy with the status quo. If they're going to vote out a government that spends money on public transport then the right thing for the government to do is not start tilting at expensive windmills. The issue with a place as small as New Zealand is that democracy just does a pretty good job of implementing the policies that most people want. The smaller the polity, the more the failures of the polity are just a reflection of its own desires. Election cycle length doesn't change that, it takes ideological change and persuasion.

"Disneyland with the death penalty"

Meanwhile, the US carries out extrajudicial killings over drugs

It's not at all clear they they're not just killing fishermen and migrants.

I'm sure incidents happen, but I doubt there's many uses for privates in south America to own private submarines.

That article is more than three decades old now. Time to give it a rest.

What you’re describing is state capitalism, which is largely what the economic system is in China, Russia, and to some degree in the US. It’s where the government intervenes in the economy and controls critical corporations and industries

It’s a city state, calling it a country is a stretch.

> "The country also passed a new law earlier this year that would allow the police to control the bank accounts of individuals who they suspect to be scam targets and limit what transactions they can do."

This is crazy to me. How far are we willing to go in terms of restricting freedoms for safety?

If you live in Singapore: don't ask us! If you disagree, vote against the government, and/or get out on the streets and protest!

If you don't live in Singapore: it's not your problem.

Human rights are everyone's problem.

Thank you for this good response to my shit comment. It was intended to make some point along these lines, but, reading it again, it completely didn't.

It’s practically a one party state, no? And I’ve heard lots of stories of protesters getting disappeared after the police arrest them. Easy to say these things.

They are a one party state, but not for lack of trying. It just turns out that turning a country from a fishing village to a world-class economy in a couple decades buys you a lot of good will from the voters.

a one party state is not the problem. you don't need multiple parties to allow multiple opinions and dissent. all they would need to do is to allow dissenting votes within the party (which, as another commenter noted, the don't, so that's hardly lack of trying), and allow everyone to join the party without requiring any allegiance to party rules that go beyond allegiance to the country itself.

china could do the same btw. china also, as far as i heard, does allow dissent within the party.

I did indeed have exactly these sorts of things in mind - but I should have spent more time iterating on my comment, the end result possibly being not to post any comment at all, because it didn't end up coming out as intended. I'll refer you to my other reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818568

The erosion of freedom is everyone's problem. Normalizing government control over personal bank accounts is a dangerous precedent. Today it's scam prevention, tomorrow it's freezing accounts of political opponents.

> tomorrow it's freezing accounts of political opponents

Except that this already happened[0], and not in "authoritarian" Singapore but in "liberal" Canada.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60383385

A much more restrictive form of this has long been normal in the US; called conservatorship.

The cops adding checks and balances to delay you from wiring $50,000k overseas is a great government looking out for the vulnerable.

But this is just part of how Singapore is different than America and Europe. China has even stricter controls in terms of limiting what individuals can do with their bank accounts (you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all!).

Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty — America probably the most so, but even EU countries are extremely liberal in a liberty sense compared to historical norms, and even compared to some well-functioning economies today like China and Singapore. It's interesting, since I think the idea of personal liberty is so deeply engrained in many of our consciousnesses that we couldn't conceive of living like that. But... plenty of people do, and they're happy about it.

Plenty of people seem to be quite supportive of the idea that visa holders (ie not citizens), or simply brown people, should NOT be allowed to criticize the standing president, so I don't know that the idea of personal liberty is as strong as I believed it was growing up.

you can't transfer money to non-Chinese-citizens at all!

that's not true. you just have to document and explain the transfer, if it is a foreign bank account. if it is a local one then the citizenship of the account holder does not even matter.

Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty

in everyday life the limits on personal liberty in china are hardly noticeable. and they are contrasted with safety even when walking through dark neighborhoods at 3am in the morning.

in everyday life the limits on personal liberty in china are hardly noticeable. and they are contrasted with safety even when walking through dark neighborhoods at 3am in the morning.

The everyday life aspects aren't noticeable because everyone has adapted to not having the liberty to e.g. rally to protest the government, shut down major infrastructure in opposition to the government, do drugs in public and buy them off the Dark Web, etc. There's quite a famous rally in the late 80s where the "shut down major city sites" difference was proven... starkly. Contrast that to last year in America, where it was quite common for protests to shut down entire highways, and not even a single tank rolled over them.

I'm not arguing that America's system is necessarily better. But it's definitely different, and Americans find the restrictions of Chinese and Singaporean-style governance baffling, as per many comments in this thread.

I personally have used the "liberty to walk home alone at night" point in discussions to point out the benefits of China's system with friends and family too, so I'm not unsympathetic to the idea. It's just a different way of thinking than many Americans have, where the ability to oppose the government and do whatever you want with your money is considered sacrosanct, and giving up personal security is culturally viewed as so clearly worth it that alternatives aren't even considered.

> Western countries put enormous value on personal liberty — America probably the most so

Ah yes, nothing screams valuing personal freedom like having 2 million people *in prison* right now in US. A rate of what, one every 140 adults?

And nothing screams personal freedom like spying every single of it's citizens or hacking every single chip on this planet.

Hell, US respects your freedom so much, you can't even renounce their citizenship!!

2 million people in prison* right now in US*

FWIW, you're nearly doubling the actual prison incarceration rate. There were about 1.25 million people in prison as of the most recent federal data (which covers up until 2023). 2MM is the number of people who were ever in a prison or jail in 2023 (including e.g. holding cells for drunk drivers), but there wasn't a point in which 2MM were in prison at a single point in time.

Nonetheless, America has >10x the number of murders per capita than China, so it's no surprise that it has nearly 10x the people in prison for murder per capita than China (in fact, it's surprising it's not >10x, to match the murder rate). Ditto for basically any crime rate you can think of.

The downside of America's system includes much higher crime rates, which ends up in higher incarceration rates. That doesn't discount that in America, much more is legal than in China: people in America commit a lot more crime, but also do a lot more things that are legal in America but illegal in China (e.g. mass rallies to protest the government). In the security/liberty tradeoff, America and China are pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum. There are downsides to both, and upsides; China is a much safer place than America.

A democratically elected government is demanding to see papers on the street, and this is celebrated by millions, so your claim about putting "enormous value on personal liberty" has been proven false.

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