[mapleoin]

> a lot more tourists are littering, so if this helps prevent it, I'm all for it.

This sounds like a great beginning to a dystopian novel. We who gave up our privacy and control over our life to the All Seeing All Knowing State to stop tourists from littering.

[philliphaydon]

You ever been to Singapore?

[scholia]

He's probably not been to Singapore, or not very often.

Like most people, he's probably not been to Singapore's close neighbors -- such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand -- and doesn't realize how much more corrupt things could be ;-)

[EliRivers]

I have. A beer was really expensive, but a return flight to Manila for a weekend drinking bender was cheaper overall than staying in Singapore to drink.

I was a little disturbed by how prevalent domestic servants were, but they were almost entirely not Singaporean citizens. I suppose it's more a mark of how poor the surrounding countries are rather than anything wrong with Singapore.

[philliphaydon]

I pretty much don't drink anymore since moving here. But it does help. Binge drinking in Australia/NZ is out of control. :/

[nazgob]

Same here but its Sweden ;)

[nickpsecurity]

You keep asking that from people who would have a huge target on their backs in a surveillance state. Quite an unreasonable expectation. Try this: "Have you had in-depth discussions on life in Singapore with people who live there now or spent significant time there? And did you listen to claims of its proponents and detractors?"

That's what I did and do. The proponents always say the exact same stuff in a refrain and ignore anything critical. The detractors usually have something new and creepy to say each year that comes from Singaporean press themselves on top of the other stuff I mostly ignore. Hence, my negative outlook on that country for certain types of people with positive outlook for other types of people.

I'm not going there unless someone can assure my safety while I blog about the threat their government poses to its citizens. I'm a civil liberties and privacy activist who reports on and fights international corruption. So, I definitely will say anything I see good or bad. Will I get locked up, tortured, kicked out? Or will they leave me alone? I can't know since transparency is a lie in that place. So, I can't ever answer yes to your question about visiting.

I can and do listen to people that live there. I find what they say varies depending on whether it's public or encrypted. I recall that being first, disturbing sign.

[PavlovsCat]

It's amazing how so many of your posts get downvoted without replies, but BS like binge drinking being out of control in Australia, that's fine.

Has anyone ever been to Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia? No? So how come anyone has an opinion on it? Did all the Americans who supported attacking Iraq spend a few years living there? And how can we know anything about Islamic fundamentalism without having being in such a group? How can we know some nordic nations are actually progressive and sane in some of their laws and attitudes? Who lived there? 0.001% of the people who talk about this and other things where the complaint of not having experienced it first-hand never ever comes up, that's who.

So how is this anything but an ad-hominem and a distraction? Having lived there doesn't necessarily involve paying lots of attention, after all. It's a double edged sword, too: Prejudice and hearsay and so on are one thing, but selection bias is another. You could say the only people who ever lived in Singapore are the people who either born there or who weren't too appalled by what they know about it to move there. Franz Beckenbauer "didn't see any shackled slaves" in Qatar, so it's a-okay to him. Does this say something nice about Qatar, or something rather nasty about Franz Beckenbauer? And who is more likely to do a lot of business there, someone like him or someone entirely unlike him? So, does that make him an expert, or rather the one person who can't see what is written on his forehead? I'm not saying Singapore is Qatar, just like I'm not saying it's Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. But it works for everything. I don't have to gamble to have an opinion of gambling, and I don't have to play soccer or dance ballet to know it takes a lot of skill.

I might as well ask questions like "At which age did you begin to ponder totalitarianism, which authors did you read on it, and what are things you come in contact with daily you would say are somewhat or very aligned with it in spirit?" or "Do you have a rough idea where you are on spectrums such as narcissism or sociopathy, and what your IQ is?", or "Does the following quote [badly translated from the German edition by me] remind you of anything in the technology sector, and stuff you can read all the time on the interwebs, if you don't hear it in real life? (that is, pseudo-scientific claims of why things are how they are, and why they have to proceed as they do)"

> We don't know any perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of all of the planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. To act would turn out to be superfluous for people living together, when all people have become an example of their species, when all doing has become an acceleration of the movement mechanism of history or nature following a set pattern, and all deeds have become the execution of death sentences which history and nature have given anyway. -- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism", page 683 in the German edition

and so on. There are a lot of more serious "litmus tests" and more important questions than "have you actually lived there". It's like someone asking "Have you ever been to the gallery of artist X, or did you just see a blurry 5 second smartphone video clip?", without the question whether the person who was there is blind even coming up. If people want to talk about people rather than ideas and facts, let's talk about people. I find it lame, but if it has to be at least let's not half-ass it so badly.

[nickpsecurity]

"It's amazing how so many of your posts get downvoted without replies, but BS like binge drinking being out of control in Australia, that's fine."

It's pretty interesting given many of my posts have been about complaints of censorship or punishment of dissenting opinions. Then, more of them try to censor my comments than reply to them. I smile as they prove my point.

"So how is this anything but an ad-hominem and a distraction? "

Good examples showing it's both. All we have to do is have a mental understanding of aspects of something to discuss it. The more understanding, the higher quality of discussion. Much information can be transmitted 2nd hand if through reliable sources. Also note they don't say the same things about their claims of America: their lack of visits meaning all their beliefs are meaningless.

Also, all they mention is violence and death when the worst cities measure violence by a few hundred people per hundred thousand. Still about 1 out of a thousand at worst in places with high violence, thug culture, and plenty bad attitudes. There's other areas so safe nobody ever locks their doors and haven't for decades. Plenty in the middle too.

In any case, you don't see me asking, "Have you lived in America? Do you actually live here or visit often?" They wouldn't need to. They'd just need to look at the numbers of various crimes per area and what contributes to them. They'd fine things exist on a scale with considerable variance. They'd, through studies and Americans' own writings, figure out counterpoints to their own claims. Unlike with Singapore, this is easy to do given we have well-known, international publications in English targeted at many demographics that don't hold anything back for civility or image purposes. :)

[pessimizer]

You gave me my big laugh for the morning.