[janalsncm]

In America we get the worst of both worlds: police won’t admit to domestic spying so they can’t use to solve day to day crimes. But they still spy on us, Constitution be damned.

As a result the US has a higher crime rate than many other countries including China. If you don’t trust China’s numbers look at Singapore, which has a population density similar to NYC with an order of magnitude less crime. Singapore is safer at night than NYC is during the day. Why? Cameras. If you commit an offense, you will be caught, without question.

[mrcartmeneses]

Singapore isn’t safe “because cameras” it’s safe because it has high social mobility, social housing, high levels of education, high levels of income equality and is generally wealthy and much wealthier than its neighbours.

And also it’s a police state where you get sentenced to death for drug smuggling and can be punished for doing drugs in another country while on holiday if you are a citizen, for example.

To the naive, Singapore is a paradise, but once you visit for long enough you realise it’s just a super nice prison and it’s not very fun being with the other lags

[ChrisMarshallNY]

William Gibson got a lot of hate for his "Disneyland With the Death Penalty" essay (in Wired), about 30 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Pena...

[janalsncm]

The United States has the death penalty and it’s certainly not Disneyland.

In the other hand calling it “Disneyland” probably oversells how fun Singapore is. It is a fairly boring place in my experience.

[shakes_mcjunkie]

"Disneyland" in this context is more about it being a highly managed place with no sense of local history.

[lupire]

USA's local history is genocide and slavery.

[mynameisvlad]

This is just straight up Whataboutism now.

Two countries can be bad. It’s not a competition.

[r00fus]

> To the naive, Singapore is a paradise, but once you visit for long enough you realise it’s just a super nice prison and it’s not very fun being with the other lags

It's not an American style of life, but I'm sure it's attractive to a lot of people who simply aren't into drugs, partying, or living the high life.

[fennecbutt]

Hilarious, because just like Dubai, nothing applies to the rich. When I was working there we were at Marina Bay Sands.

One night went up to the bar on the roof (god damn the drinks were pricey) clearly ultra wealthy peeps up there, group of very wealthy looking Africans with a magnum of champagne openly smoking weed.

[petre]

Yes, it's attractive to rich Chinese taking a break from Xi's regime. Others pick Canada or NZ instead.

[ted_bunny]

People complain that you can get fined (the caning is a myth in this case) for spitting your gum on the sidewalk or not flushing a public toilet.

But being a selfish prick is a privilege, not a right. Why do you feel entitled to do shitty things that make your city a worse place for everyone?

[lupire]

Many Americans prefer a non junkie style of life.

[temporarara]

This. I'm sure there are lots of things I don't like about Singapore, but the fact that doing and especially dealing drugs is kinda hard and may have death penalty level consequences is a non-issue for me. Cultures that promote drug usage are disgusting and once the drugs comes into your neighborhood there is no way to just ignore it if you care about your safety. I wouldn't care too much if it was just some guys using drugs for fun and that was the end of it, but drugs destroy whole communities and I hate it.

[LtWorf]

I think that's a USA centric view.

Drugs aren't linked to violence unless you make laws to link them.

[temporarara]

Sounds like you haven't met those nice druggies just yet. I don't live in the USA and the law here is extremely lenient for druggies. Yet, pretty much every newspaper I read has some drug related crime in it. Robberies, mindless violence, extortion, murders, damage to properties, lovely stuff. I hate them with passion, and applaud Singaporeans for dealing with the scum appropriately.

Like I said, I would not care if druggies were decent people who just wanted to get high sometimes. However, unfortunately that is not how it works in the reality. They are the worst kind of people and I have zero sympathy for them after all the shit I've seen them do.

[LtWorf]

You talk about meeting and then about newspapers? Have you met them yourself?

[jMyles]

> people who simply aren't into drugs

...are we still having to go over this?

There are no such people. Everybody does drugs, unless you adopt a definition of "drug" which is designed specifically to accommodate this assertion, rather than apply in some useful way to reality. It's difficult to even create a definition of 'drug' which convincingly excludes survival necessities like water and oxygen, but remains otherwise consistent.

There are some drugs which are, for reasons varying from racism to capriciousness to an intemperant desire for greater cartel income, prohibited to varying degrees in various jurisdictions.

You can go to Singapore and consume sugar, coffee, nicotine, alcohol, and many other drugs while enjoying the tacit endorsement of your behavior by the local state apparatus. You can also consume cocaine, opioids, and plenty of other drugs so long as you pay black market rates and do so shielded by privilege so as not to run afoul of an investigation. You can even consume cannabis, though of course it is very difficult to smuggle, so you pay a higher premium.

[LordShredda]

You know what we mean by drugs. Not coffee, not alcohol.

[jMyles]

No, I really don't know. Do you just mean drugs which the state prohibits?

If so, isn't that begging the question? If a person wants to go to a place where drugs are prohibited, and "drug" is defined as a substance which is prohibited, then doesn't every jurisdiction qualify?

If a person "simply isn't into drugs", with "drugs" defined by the local state, isn't that person just in favor of the state-prescribed diet? And it really has nothing to do with drugs?

If such a person goes from a place where drug X is prohibited to one where it is not, does their preference suddenly change?

One better: if a person goes from a place where drug X is prohibited to one where it is compulsory, do they suddenly fall in love with the drug?

Of course not. Because nobody's preferences work that way. Ergo, there is no actual real human who meets the critera, "simply isn't into drugs" upon close examination.

Sure, there may be people who are pro-prohibition, but I imagine nearly all of them are in a position to financially gain from it. In terms of outcomes, it's horrible policy, especially if a target is reduction of death and disease from drug use.

[mynameisvlad]

Why do you consider weed to be a drug and not alcohol? Alcohol can be far more damaging both to the person and those around them. Hell, caffeine probably fucks up your system more than weed too.

So why are they not considered drugs? Is it because of literally the comment you responded to?

[fennecbutt]

I went to Singapore for a week of work a few years ago. >high levels of income equality

Oh yes, I'm sure all of the Indians crammed into the back of a caged ute on their way to building sites have income equality. Saw loads of stuff like that there.

Or the fact that being gay is still illegal, didn't stop me "breaking the law" the second day I was there.

I put Singapore into the same category as Dubai; it's all a facade and all can be conveniently ignored with a veil of money.

[lupire]

When the choice is a civilized prison or a jungle, the prison isn't so bad.

How many children were murdered (by guns or drugs) in school in Singapore last year?

[jhanschoo]

> To the naive, Singapore is a paradise, but once you visit for long enough you realise it’s just a super nice prison and it’s not very fun being with the other lags

Oh come on, your yardstick is completely ill-calibrated. Among polities that

- didn't exist as independent polities until post-WWII

- were not modernized/westernized/democratized until post-WWII (thereby excluding NZ)

you'd be hard-pressed to name one that you'd be rather born as a random citizen in. Perhaps another of the Asian tigers, like TW. Presumably you have in mind, as Gibson probably did, a country that has had a longer history of independent or democratic rule and economic development.

[skhunted]

The claims made in your first paragraph are undermined by your third paragraph.

[bryanrasmussen]

the first paragraph did not claim it was not a prison, it just claimed it was safe not because it was a prison but for other reasons.

The third paragraph claimed it was a prison but it did not say the safety came from it being a prison.

the third paragraph and first paragraph are not in conflict.

[skhunted]

The fact that it is a prison with much surveillance has little to do with its low crime? This is not a credible belief.

[bryanrasmussen]

I wasn't saying it was wrong or not - I just said the two paragraphs were not inherently contradictory.

[skhunted]

That’s why I said “undermined” and not “contradicted”.

[skhunted]

I know it’s not true in American prisons but generally not much crime occurs in prison. If Singapore is prison like then it seems that this would at least be a contributing factor to its lack of crime.

[observationist]

Not that US institutions don't lie, but our bureaucracy and government oversight systems come with the benefit that many of the things we track and document can be verified. Other countries simply lie. The numbers you get are not a rough approximation of reality; they're simply part of whatever story that country wants to tell.

Crime rate is a statistic for which a majority of countries provide numbers that are completely dissociated from reality.

You can, of course, take the numbers seriously, as if the statistics are being published in good faith. Unless you have some sort of independent oversight, however, that isn't beholden to or biased by the country being assessed, then taking those numbers seriously is probably a silly thing to do.

The US gets lots of independent verification and validation of crime statistics. They're frequently analyzed at local, state, and federal level by journalists, students, activists, authors, and government officials. At every level an official number is published, it gets challenged, so there are incentives keeping the politicians and bureaucrats honest. They get slammed when they get caught lying, and they get caught lying because the public and the media keep track of things and demand accountability.

Some stuff, like total officer involved shootings, dog shootings by officials, abuses of power, and things of that nature, don't get publicly disclosed much of the time, so there are gaps in what we know and what officials are required to disclose.

The US isn't perfect, but you can get pretty good numbers that actually correlate with reality. Even other western countries don't always have trustworthy reporting and accounting for government actions. The best you'll ever get is a glowing narrative.

[mlrtime]

You're not wrong, however when it comes to NYC statistically it is the safest in the US. However this is mostly looking at murder/capita.

It does not account for the 1000s of illegal small assaults that happen daily. Anyone spending time in NYC will eventually run into this.

But then you get the one person who says "I've never been mugged" or "I've never been punched" or a journalist vists for a day and says it's all fine.

Meanwhile there is a lot of stockholm syndrome of what QoL people put up with on a day to day basis.

[janalsncm]

Singapore has very low levels of corruption. Even lower than in the United States. You can choose to dismiss them, but I think their numbers are reliable.

[dgfitz]

This post should be stickied at the top of this topic.

[LtWorf]

Such a long text for "their numbers are better than ours, they are clearly liars"

[vundercind]

Same with national ID and our fear of “papers, please”. We have all the downsides—constantly having to provide ID to everyone, government can trivially access all kinds of tracking data tied to that—but none of the benefits of an actual national ID because we have to pretend we don’t have one (we do, it’s just 80% privatized and a massive liability and inconvenience for citizens in ways that it doesn’t need to be)

[SpaceManNabs]

> we do, it’s just 80% privatized and a massive liability and inconvenience for citizens in ways that it doesn’t need to be

I am guessing to you are referring to how multiple private organizations can just poll for my social security number and I cant do anything about it? Yeah...

[vundercind]

Yep. It’s a pain in the ass to deal with from our end, to put it mildly, but easy to piece it all together on the other, so it’s barely an impediment to bad actors. Since there are functionally no restrictions on government using parts of that system to grab all kinds of data from private sources, it’s a national ID connected directly to a crazy-powerful dragnet spying system, too. But inconvenient, insecure, and very hard to gain oversight of.

All the bad shit, none of the good. We may as well just have a national ID, it’d be less-bad than what we have now and might provide a jumping off point for making it a lot less-bad.

[forgetfreeman]

The irony of individuals freaking out over the notion of what the wildly underfunded and largely indifferent federal government might do to collect data when private industry is surveilling basically every aspect of their existence for most of every day...

[brokenmachine]

Private industry can't directly send someone to prison.

[LtWorf]

Soon: "our AI predicts that individual X has a 90% chance of committing a violent crime within the next semester"

[lupire]

Private industry sells your data to the government to do that.

[mlrtime]

"wildly underfunded"? Do you really believe what you just wrote here?

What private industry surveillance is mandatory? FFS.

[throw10920]

User "forgetfreeman" has not actually looked up the budget of the US government.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> constantly having to provide ID to everyone

I live in WA and for the past 5+ years I've only ever presented my driver's license to TSA agents at the airport.

...unless getting carded at the store for buying beer counts?

[vundercind]

Doctor, dentist, employers, educational institutions. [edit] all financial institutions, lenders, et c

Unless you’re buying everything with cash, your purchasing history will be connected to it, too. Where you drive (license plate scanning and data-sharing is widespread). Facial recognition in stores means paying cash might not even help (seen the ones that highlight your face on a monitor when you walk in the store?)

But we have to pretend we don’t have a national ID system any time it might be convenient to a person to have that.

[DaiPlusPlus]

Right. I thought the parent post was talking about being challenged by government officials/police ("papers, please") on a regular basis - and not about private-sector use. A misunderstanding on my part.

[yardie]

I literally had to present ID this morning to buy cold medicine. Had to present ID lastweek to enter my kid's school then had to present ID to their pediatrician.

[deathlight]

It's sad how in the state of Washington I have become accustomed to drawing my ID out on every transaction that involves confirming that I'm over 21 whereas cross the border into Idaho there's not a single time I have ever been asked to provide my ID in over 10 years. Clearly in Idaho they can take one look at me and go like well yeah clearly but such visual social technology is beyond the pale in the great creepy state of Washington. I'm a bit sad to think of what the children of today's children will be like when I am very old and they are very young. Maybe one day nobody will know what it was like to live in a society that was able to just tell things by looking at it.

[forgetfreeman]

At least two of those instances make perfect sense. Meth's a thing and we don't like unidentified individuals fucking around on school grounds these days.

[lupusreal]

I think Singapore whipping the shit out of criminals probably has a lot to do with it. Not just Singapore, but most of the rest of Asian countries as well. South Korea treats their prisoners so harshly that the US military has to have a special agreement in place to ensure that US servicemen imprisoned for crimes by South Korea actually get fed more than a starvation diet and don't have to do hard labor: https://www.stripes.com/migration/for-u-s-inmates-in-s-korea...

Of course South Koreans know better than American soldiers not to commit crimes in South Korea, because prison there is so awful. Unsurprisingly they have a much lower crime rate than America.

[8372049]

The big downsides with horrible prison are that criminals will have a huge incentive to do anything to not get caught and convicted, including violently resisting arrest, shootouts, targeting witnesses and so on. It is mostly effective as a deterrent against financial/winning-relates crimes, but mostly ineffective against most other types of crimes. Plus, horrible prison is much less likely to actually reform the person in question.

Statistically, the Norwegian system with "holiday prisons" works well, with very low recidivism rates for most types of crime.

[lupusreal]

Norway's intention homicide rate is six times greater than Singapore's.

[infotainment]

That’s why execution is the ideal solution, not prisons. During a brief transition period you may have to deal with violently resisting arrest and the like, but eventually you get to the point where all the criminals are dead.

[fennecbutt]

本当の殺人鬼だな、キラは.

[infotainment]

Hah! It had some flaws, but I did enjoy that manga.

[bryanlarsen]

Studies show that the severity of the punishment has little impact crime rates -- the odds of getting caught & punished are much more significant.

[kube-system]

> Singapore is safer at night than NYC is during the day. Why? Cameras. If you commit an offense, you will be caught, without question.

There's more to it than that. A sheisty will defeat a camera.

[echoangle]

Not when you have a lot of cameras, right? You still have to put it on somewhere without being seen, and you would have to swap all clothes so you can’t be tracked by checking tapes of other locations for your clothes before you put it on.

[AvocadoPanic]

Is it the catching or the imprisoning NYC and many other cities are struggling with in current year?

[lupusreal]

American criminal subcultures treat going to prison as almost as a rite of passage, rather than something to be avoided at all costs. Sentences are too short and too easy.