This is crazy to me. How far are we willing to go in terms of restricting freedoms for safety?
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.
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.
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.
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!!
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.
The cops adding checks and balances to delay you from wiring $50,000k overseas is a great government looking out for the vulnerable.
If you don't live in Singapore: it's not your problem.
china could do the same btw. china also, as far as i heard, does allow dissent within the party.
Except that this already happened[0], and not in "authoritarian" Singapore but in "liberal" Canada.