[frenchieinsg]

I'd love to hear some examples, particularly recent.

I was personally impressed by how light handed the country was with its enemies; for example, communist agitators and Chinese agents were merely exiled from the country (and in some cases later allowed back in), rather than jailed or executed as is more common in the region and in other "right wing" flavored governments.

[toni]

I think you should regularly read "Singapore Dissident"[1] a blog written by a Singaporean lawyer who is at the moment a political refugee in US.

[1] http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/

[frenchieinsg]

Wording like that is not encouraging: "[Why would Singaporeans] rather live as Labrador Retrievers and not human beings? Why do they accept a life where they have to live no better than slaves, where they have no rights and completely at the mercy of a dictator?"

True political discourse - and convincing arguments - sound more like this: http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/antifed/main.htm

The thing is, I've read two pages of the stuff, and it's mostly name calling with a few names from history thrown in. Where is the reliable, third party evidence of so called human rights infringements? Plenty has been written on Abu Ghraib, for example, or Assad's use of chemical weapons. That's what I want to see - independent, solid evidence of human rights infringements and unfairness of courts. I've been pointed to plenty of independent blogs but never saw evidence of the widespread human rights abuses that Singapore is apparently committing. At worst, people dig up incidents from the creation of the country decades ago - where, should I remind you, LKY was actively fighting Maoist Chinese attempts at taking over the country by agents corrupting the political process!

I've lived and worked in countries where citizen truly are "labradors" with "no rights" and "at the mercy of a dictator". They looked nothing like Singapore. On the other hand, I've lived in countries where parties like the "Workers Party" have strongly influenced politics, and a few decades later, you get ghettos, no law zones, a crumbling economy, high unemployment and so on. In the case of emerging markets, they result in countries with zero or negative growth rates, GDP per capita a fiftieth of Singapore's, and widespread monopolies somehow connected to the government. I just don't see it here. More evidence?

(I'm going to be slow on this thread since it appears HN is now rate limiting me. It's a pleasure to have a conversation, nevertheless - thanks for participating.)

[dang]

> it appears HN is now rate limiting me

New accounts are rate limited because of past abuses. We marked your account legit to turn that off.

[lazylizard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chia_Thye_Poh

[frenchieinsg]

This is where I will venture outside purely presenting ideas, and into the personal. I wish the French government had done this with the Soviet agents that shaped the direction of government post WWII (indeed, many resistants were communists and wanted to free France not for independence but to allow it to join the Internationale - Bigeard recalls De Gaulle ordering him to Toulouse to replace one such dangerous new leader). Mitterrand was the peak, but the country's economy (and social structure) was effectively wiped out by successive socialist administrations and even today, around 4% of the population votes communist and it is dangerous and will get you socially ostracized to hold libertarian or even mildly classically liberal views in public (such as considering the minimum wage, or public education, to be negatives). We recently made headlines by proposing 75% income tax for the highest tax band, similar to Britain's 98% capital gains tax in the period just prior to Thatcher. LKY observed all this in Europe and learnt and applied the lessons accordingly in his own country.

As far as I am concerned, they are internal enemies and I wish we had had a Lee Kuan Yew, or at least the willingness to accept that some ideologies are dangerous to prosperity and individual rights. The mob will, however, always vote away their freedom if led down the right salience tunnel. I recognize that I might be in the minority with these thoughts.