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by rjzzleep 2260 days ago
> Vietnam is a police state. Singapore is a police state. South Korea is a police state. China is a police state. HK is a police state.

Taiwan is not.

I'm not Taiwanese but one sentence I used to hear when I was little was:

"The extent of your personal freedom goes as far as it starts endangering other peoples personal liberties"

The reason why the US and Germany are resorting to police state techniques is because:

1. The countries have been pushing there boundaries for at least a decade now and this is the perfect opportunity to use.

2. Even though Germans are happy to police you crossing a red light in the middle of the night, there is no sense of communal unity in society and there is even less trust in Government because there is zero transparency in communication. Basically the Government assumes everyone besides them is an idiot. Social shaming is the weapon of choice in Taiwan.

1 comments

For practical purposes Taiwan is a police state which is rather understandable considering that its neighbor thinks it is a rogue province.

Neither US nor Germany resorted to police state techniques. In a set of the Western democracies only France is getting close to it.