[gojomo]

Singapore is already 'ahead' of the US in having a site-blocking mechanism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Singapor...

One nice thing about the US political culture is that even those who want to censor things will try to spin their efforts as being something else; 'censorship' is a dirty word here, and even professional censors know it.

This isn't the same in less individualistic cultures; there it is often more broadly accepted that censorship for the 'public interest' must occur. The responsible agencies will thus speak with a frankness and pride about their censoring activities – unlike here in the USA, where the same topics only get euphemistic discussion.

Singapore has many admirable qualities but the space afforded non-traditional expression, and especially governmental criticism, is much more limited than in North America. Wikipedia has a nice summary of general cross-media censorship in Singapore...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Singapore

...and the use of domestic libel suits and other pressure to discredit or pressure news publishers occasionally gets mention in major Western papers, as with this example...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04pubed.html

[o2sd]

> Singapore has many admirable qualities

Could you enumerate them? Do you (or have you) live(d) in Singapore?

[andycroll]

I live here. Have for 5 years, and my latest startup will keep me here for a good number more... success permitting!

Singapore has excellent food, weather and is incredibly safe & clean. You can eat $4 noodles or $400 dollar steak. Booze is too expensive. Public transport is cheap, comfortable and mostly efficient (until a couple of recent train breakdowns).

It's also a great base for traveling Asia.

From a startup perspective, a huge amount of emphasis (read: money) is currently being applied to regional entrepreneurs to base themselves in Singapore's low-tax, straightforward business environment.

Engineers have been slightly underpaid historically, but things are beginning to improve. Coupled with the low tax rate though... the main problem is expensive rental accommodation.

The government certainly is guilty of heavy-handed-ness in a variety of situations but in general it appears to be from a sense of egocentric paternalism ('we know best what is good for you') rather than cynical exploitation.

They currently have some issues in terms of redistributing the wealth fairly to locals. The perception is that competition for jobs amongst the lower middle class is hampered by economic migration from poorer countries in the region.

Happy to talk more... but I've gone on enough already.

[o2sd]

Thanks for replying. I lived in Singapore for a year, and my experience of the place was very different from yours is, so I am interested in your perspective.

From your reply, I understand that you are running a startup in Singapore? I am particularly interested in why you find Singapore good in that regard. Apart from the low taxes, my experience of Singapore would indicate to me that it is a very difficult place for a technology startup for the following reasons (if you could refute these I would be most interested).

1. The large and ongoing diaspora of educated, intelligent engineers who find the constant censorship and nonsensical propaganda distasteful and leave for free-er pastures. Making it difficult to hire and keep technical people locally.

2. The abysmal state of internet services. I found internet to be slow, unavailable, expensive, monitored and censored.

3. Despite the low taxes, the cost of living is very high. The Lee family (through Temasek and the Government) control the supply and demand for housing and use that leverage to apply a 'rental tax' on guest workers which is a way of distributing wealth from the middle class 'migrant' workers to the local population (who receive preferential terms for loans and purchase price of Government housing. There is typically a 300 bps spread between the loan and the rental yield). Food and transport is also expensive.

4. Related to 1 & 2, the general antithetic feeling towards free speech.

5. The city is boring as hell. It has some good museums, and a couple of interesting nightspots, but generally not much goes on. Anyone doing anything interesting risks fining, caning, jailing or all three. For technical people this is a big downside.

Apart from those, there are some things I do agree with you on. 1. The city is very safe (except for Dengue fever), and very clean, something that appeals to technical people.

2. The weather is excellent if you like 28 deg Celsius @ 85% humidity 300 days of the year. (I don't, but SGP does have A/C almost everywhere.)

3. It IS a great base for travelling in SE Asia. For North Asia, I think HK is better.

And some, not so much. 1. The public transport is not particularly reliable, except in Govt. statistics. The buses are often late, are very slow and badly organised. The trains are fine as long as you don't have to change lines, then they seem to be deliberately mis-timed. I was in Singapore when the train breakdowns occurred. On the green line they did not have enough power to run the line, so they started turning the A/C off.

2. The food ranges from mediocre (and expensive) to food poisoning. How you find the food will depend on which country you arrived from. For me, it was uninspiring.

Every place has good points and bad. On balance, I personally felt that the bad outweighed the good, but there were other contributing factors to that decision. I am still curious as to why you think it is a good city for a startup. Regards, o2sd

[curiouscats]

- successful economic development (those born in rich countries seem to take richness for granted. It is very valuable to those being born the country for the country to be rich. Singapore is now rich. It was poor just 40 years ago) - safe city (probably the safest large city in the world) - nice, warm weather - great food - easiest country to set up a business in the world - good educational system - very good health results - budget surplus (they are not creating huge debt for the next few generations to deal with) - very good public housing - very good mass transit (people want it better, but it still is better than most other large, rich cities) - good parks - emerging art scene (it doesn't beat most other rich, world class cities, but is good and growing) - international crossroads, very multi-cultural city which is nice in many ways but also a good position to be in as the world moves in a similar the direction) - extremely well run government, you (or citizens...) may not like everything they are trying to do, but they are very effective at what they aim to do (something many governments are not able to do). They are willing to do very interesting things. Singapore will pay for the education of excellent students from Malaysia (as one small example - Singapore does many innovative things governmentally) - very walkable city (don't need a car - can walk and use mass transit) ...

I have lived there. I now live across strait in Malaysia. Here is my blog on Singapore

   http://singapore.curiouscatnetwork.com/

I realize Singapore also have things they could do better. But this was a list of things Singapore does well.

[rsynnott]

> Singapore is now rich. It was poor just 40 years ago

Many countries, particularly in that general region, have achieved that without being police states, though. Even where they had oppressive governments (as with Taiwan and South Korea back in the day), that has generally eased.

[gojomo]

Despite the fact that Singapore doesn't have North American levels of political diversity and free speech protection, I don't think it's fair to imply it is a 'police state'. It's a rich city with a powerful political establishment that uses some levers of power that are taboo in North America. But there's an elected parliament, a non-corrupt bureaucracy, and a respected legal system derived from English law. (Though, there are no jury trials and the government always wins its libel cases.)

In the economic dimension, at least, the case can be made Singapore has gone farther and faster than its other 'asian tiger' peers.

And, I'm not sure that Taiwan or South Korea would come out better in a point-by-point comparison of either economic or political/social freedoms. They're all different than US standards regarding dissent, by my understanding. (I've read the least about Taiwan's internal politics.)

[rsynnott]

I'm comparing more to Europe than to the US, but in particular, Singapore is not meaningfully democratic. The one party is enormously dominant, and there's considerable evidence that other parties are pressured not to field candidates. "The government always wins its libel cases" - sort of demonstrates that (a) the government is at least unusual (normal democratic governments do not bring libel cases, or the Daily Mail would be in a lot of trouble), and (b) the judiciary is compromised.

> And, I'm not sure that Taiwan or South Korea would come out better in a point-by-point comparison of either economic or political/social freedoms

Both are now relatively democratic, though it's a recent thing.

[gojomo]

Singapore is obviously not the usual sort of competitive democracy with vibrant (and even celebrated) dissent like the major Western democracies.

But it's also far from a 'police state', the very loaded term you introduced. It's interesting precisely because it seems to illustrate that there's not a stark binary choice between 'democracy' and 'despotism', but rather a more multidimensional choice space, and on many scales their choices are doing very well.

It's also the case that even in impeccable liberal democracies, cities/regions/jurisdictions larger than Singapore's 4-million population can remain overwhelmingly loyal to a single party for decades, for its local officials and representatives to national legislature.

For example, Chicago has had Democratic Party mayors for almost twice as long as Singapore has existed as a country. Some unfair play by the incumbent machine is an understood factor, but it's also the case that the major alternative statewide, the Republican Party, isn't very attractive to city residents. What competition does occur happens under one party label.

Against its region, then, the noncompetitiveness of Singapore internal politics may be just as much or more an outgrowth of that same sort of local identity/satisfaction against distinct alternatives, as it is from the unfair play.

[virtualritz]

> easiest country to set up a business in the world

Could you elaborate what your base of comparison is to make such statement? How many countries have you set businesses up in?

Speaking just of Asia, I set up businesses in Singapore and Hong Kong. The latter was easier to setup and proved easier to run, with less running costs over the course of 3 years so far. I also found Hong Kong to be way more founder-friendly when it comes to getting angel money or VC.

Regarding the police state: 1st time I spent a day in Singapore, in 2005, on a 14h stopover from a long haul flight to Australia, I wanted to take a nap on a lawn in a public park. Two police offers told me I can't and they'll have to fine me but they'd make an exception since I'm a tourist. I was wearing a tailor-made suit btw., not some daggy traveler attire.

That was when I knew Singapore was not for me.

Don't get me wrong, I have friends living there and they like it a lot. They are a family of four and they do fit in the 'ideal standard' box of people the government there wants to have as citizens.

But be careful if you don't. Singapore has laws that make homosexuals face legal threats. And you can be fined if someone spots you walking around in your house naked (in your own 4 walls, mind you!).

[curiouscats]

World Bank ranking: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/10-easiest-countrie...

Granted most any subjective ranking has plenty of room for argument. There isn't likely truly any clearly #1 for "setting up a business" as so much depends on the situation. But Singapore consistently is ranked very highly on this measure.

[sehugg]

And you can be fined if someone spots you walking around in your house naked (in your own 4 walls, mind you!).

In the U.S., this could get you jail time: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6406...

[Eeko]

> those born in rich countries seem to take richness for granted. It is very valuable to those being born the country for the country to be rich. Singapore is now rich. It was poor just 40 years ago

Most of the so called rich countries were little more than bombed-to-stone-age hellholes 50-60 years ago. Before WW2, Singapore was fairly wealtfy and important harbour state for East and West.

It's super-impressive what Singapore has built up, but I would be careful to say most people in rich countries take it any more granted than Singaporeans. E.g. Germans are still working hard to unify the country after WW2 and the Iron Curtain.

[curiouscats]

I didn't say those in other rich countries take it more for granted that the currently rich Singaporeans. Kids today in Singapore have an entitled attitude similar to (probably not quite as extreme, but still...) that of kids in the USA. The current (rich) kid attitude in Singapore is not like the attitude of kids in poor countries today or Singapore in 1970.

Poverty in much of the world today means: people starving, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no clean water... Often those in rich countries (which I would imagine lots of those reading Hacker News are) don't appreciate the benefits of those things. We are not talking about poverty of not being able to get cable TV or a fancy coffee.

Singapore was not rich, and had been occupied, brutally, by Japan during WWII. Here is data on how rich Singapore was http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/economy/hist/gdp.htm...

  GDP in current USD for countries  http://www.econstats.com/weo/V008.htm

__________ 1970___2010

UK________ 2250___36300 USA_______ 5050___47100 France____ 2936___40600 Germany___ 2497___40500 Singapore_ 920___42650

Brazil____ 409___10500 Malaysia__ 412___7755 Mexico____ 900___9200 Panama____ 753___7700 Portugal__ 859___21000 South Africa_ 850___7100 Venezuela__ 1790___9773

Malaysia and Singapore were 1 country for a short while after independence. This is also why the data can't start much earlier, Singapore wasn't its own country until 1965 (and wasn't "independent" - as part of independent Malaysia) until 1963.

People have a right to dislike some of Singapore's policies, I think. But denying that they have done a fantastic job economically I think is just contrary to the facts. They have one advantage - a good location for a port. They have very little else - no natural resources, no store of wealth to build up after WWII... Likely at least dozens of countries were in better shape to grow economically in 1970, than was Singapore. Singapore surpassed probably all of them. Even if Singapore didn't, they did about as well as any country. I can't imagine more than 10 countries could reasonably be argued had better economic performance from 1970 to 2010.

I do like what Germany took on and has accomplished.

[gojomo]

I've visited twice, read a lot, and conversed with a number of people who've lived there.

I admire how productive and peaceful Singapore is, with high living standards, a diverse population, a large degree of economic freedom/opportunity, and continuing effective investment in infrastructure and education. And it got there from a somewhat chaotic and resource-constrained start as an independent country, less than 50 years ago.

From what I've read, its health-care system delivers results as well as any other highly-developed country, at much lower costs.

[o2sd]

> I've visited twice, read a lot, and conversed with a number of people who've lived there.

So did I before I lived there. Once you live there for a while (a year or more), you begin to understand that much of what you thought was true is merely a thin façade.

Still, compared to it's neighbours, it has come a long way. Mostly due to importing expertise and technology from the West.

>I admire how productive and peaceful Singapore is, with high living standards

It's not particularly productive. Singapore lives off the proceeds of its port and it's oil Bourse.It IS peaceful, I'll grant you that. When you have police with automatic weapons,ready to use, in plain view it tends to chill people out.

> a large degree of economic freedom/opportunity

A 'large degree'? Sounds very Singaporean. :)

>continuing effective investment in infrastructure and education

Debatable. Certainly that is the Govt. line, but like much in SGP, the reality is very different.

> From what I've read, its health-care system delivers results as well as any other highly-developed country, at much lower costs.

I know this is a BIG issue for USians, but most developed countries don't spend much time thinking about their health care system. It's taken for granted, because it is always there, and mostly works (with exceptions).

[jemeshsu]

You are so 1990s.