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Comment by rburhum | Hacker News Reader

I've heard this so many times from people that live in a place where one of this "little experiments" is not happening.

It is easy to be an anarchist or communist when you dont have to live in such a place.

I've lived and worked extensively in singapore, thailand and china, all with speech controls. They all have their pros and cons and I'd be hard pressed to categorically state they're better or worse than my home country of Australia.

> you dont have to live in such a place

True, and neither do they. Singapore's a first world country; its citizens can settle elsewhere with relative ease. And yet they don't. I wonder why?

And just to turn your rhetorical device against you, what I've heard "so many times" is these self-righteous rants by people who have never even visited the place they're criticising, but they're oh so sure they're right anyway. And for what it's worth, the USA is an experiment too, and from an outsider's perspective I'm not sure it's working out too well.

> And just to turn your rhetorical device against you, what I've heard "so many times" is these self-righteous rants by people who have never even visited the place they're criticising, but they're oh so sure they're right anyway. And for what it's worth, the USA is an experiment too, and from an outsider's perspective I'm not sure it's working out too well.

Just as an FYI, not "rethoric" from my side. I was born and raised in a country that went through a hell hole of super inflation and constant bombs going off from a "marxist" terrorist group known as the Shining Path. The "president" that "fixed" this situation was really a dictator that did not pay attention to human rights or democratic due process. The terrorist group got destroyed and "order" was brought into place at the expense of free speech and true democracy. Oh yeah, and he put a bomb in my dad's car because he disagreed with his political views. Those were the two first decades of my life.

So I kind of know what I am talking about.

If Australia was truly going through free-speech "problems" - I am sure you would not be so easy to refer to these "experiments"

I'm sorry to hear about your experiences, I mean that. But I don't see how that has much to do with what we're talking about.

I wish you'd step back from your personal trauma and look at the big picture. You say this "terrorist" group caused the rise of a dictator and the loss of free speech and democracy. Why didn't free speech and democracy stop such instability in the first place, if they're such a panacea like you seem to think? Because that's exactly what I'm talking about - the ingredients of a stable, wealthy, secure and fulfilling society.

Of course, the irony is that that would have never happened in Singapore.

You dont think it is presumptious of you to think you can somehow dissect a situation in an entire region (South America) without clearly any historical knowledge that can give you meaningful context? I say this because your question "Why didnt free speech and democracy stop such instability in the first place?" show a clear misunderstanding/lack of knowledge and tremendous oversimplification of Cold War era politics, neo-colonialism, caudillism, Spanish feudalism and decentralisation of power. Breaking it down to a simple explanation of "is free speech and democracy good and if such why didnt it help here?" is clearly silly at best.

Your comment was also a ridiculous over-simplification. My reply was a bit facetious, which was probably silly of me. But whatever. We both fail at arguing; I have not influenced you nor have you influenced me.

Anyway, it appears that I'm now treading on people's toes so that's enough from me.

I succeeded at pointing out how haughty, supercilious and disconnected your comments about democratic experiments... Even though you were quick to downvote my replies.

Enough for me, too.

This account doesn't have enough karma to downvote anyone :-P

Then you did succeed at convincing somebody out there! :)

Except people in Singapore stated they like it there.

And I considered moving to Singapore a couple times, if I get ever invited for a job there, I would promptly accept.

I don't agree with lots of their laws, but I must recognize that it works. (Singapore is clean, safe, has good business freedom, the government does not tolerate racism and religious hate, and the city has a very interesting functional design).

Sure the world you would step into when you went to Singapore would be great and fine. However if you consider the fact that Singapore has the highest gini coefficient (measures wealth inequality) [0] then the inability to speak freely might be pretty awful for the peoples at the bottom. It's easy to gloss over the weakest links in our societies (we sure do it well here in America, and probably almost everywhere) but you really have to remember that your Singapore isn't most people from Singapores Singapore and therefore it only seems fair to include a postfix: I don't agree with many of Singapore's laws but it works for me.

[0] - http://thehearttruths.com/2013/02/21/singapore-has-the-highe...

> Except people in Singapore stated they like it there.

In a country where you are not allowed to openly criticize the ruling power, how can you even measure what people of Singapore really like?

Even in countries with heavy censorship, you can tell if large groups are unhappy, they might state they are happy with their mouths, but body language, and general behaviour will show otherwise.

Also, problematic countries also frequently have some dissenters, and people that managed to flee and speak against it while outside it.

Singapore don't forbid you to leave, and all people I ever talked that went to Singapore, or lived in Singapore but where outside Singapore, mostly only had praise for the country.

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