View source for The Strange Case of Singapore

<!-- you can have any number of categories here -->
[[Category:The Jolly Libertarian]]
[[Category:Singapore]]
<!-- 1 URL must be followed by >= 0 Other URL and Old URL and 1 End URL.-->
{{URL | url = http://jollylibertarian.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-strange-case-of-singapore.html}}
<!-- {{Other URL | url = }} -->
<!-- {{Old URL | url = }} -->
{{End URL}}
{{DES | des = A libertarian visits Singapore and notes a history of national economic strategies, public education, public housing, compulsory saving, nationalization of some industries, compulsory national service, high military expenditure, authoritarian government, censorship and drug war. | show=}}
<!-- insert wiki page text here -->
<!-- DPL has problems with categories that have a single quote in them.  Use these explicit workarounds. -->
<!-- otherwise, we would use {{Links}} and {{Quotes}}  -->
{{List|title=The Strange Case of Singapore|links=true}}
{{Quotations|title=The Strange Case of Singapore|quotes=true}}

{{Text |
Singapore is a fascinating study in contrasts. We just came back after spending two days there and we loved it. But politically...well!  That's an interesting story. The country's origins are intriguing, as well as its government, economy and laws. It is billed as one of the cleanest, greenest and safest cities in the world. But at a price. Its laws may seem draconian to liberals and ideal to conservatives. But let's start with its origins as an independent state.

In a previous post I quoted Murray Rothbard on the secessionist justification for anarchism: "If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as being in a state of impermissible 'anarchy', why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person? But, of course, if each person may secede from government, we have virtually arrived at the purely free society, where defense is supplied along with all other services by a free market and where the invasive state has ceased to exist."

And Hans Hermann Hoppe argued that "We must promote the idea of secession. Or more specifically, we must promote the idea of a world composed of tens of thousands of distinct districts, regions, and cantons, and hundred of thousands of independent free cities such as the present day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Greatly increased opportunities for economically motivated migration would thus result, and the world would be one of small [classically] liberal governments economically integrated through free trade and an international commodity money such as gold."

Indeed there are and have been secessionist movements around the world. In Quebec there was an active separatist movement, though it has been in limbo for years. The Basques in Spain have agitated to secede from that country. And in the United States, one of the bloodiest wars ever fought was to prevent the southern states from seceding.

Singapore, favorably mentioned by Hoppe, is an anomalie. It has a long history. Modern Singapore was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819 as an outpost of the East India Company. In 1826, after the company collapsed, the islands were ceded to Britain as part of the Straits Settlements. Occupied by Japan during World War Two, the city was united with other British colonies in the area after the war to become Malaysia. And here is where the story differs from the separatist movements like that of Quebec or the Basques.

Malaysia was dominated by the Malay people while Singapore was dominated by the Chinese. The United Malays National Organization which ruled Malaysia saw the Singapore based People's Action Party (PAP) as a threat in the 1964 elections. There were also race riots in Singapore between the Chinese and the Malays. The Chinese majority in Singapore opposed the affirmative action policies of the Malaysian government.

Part of the conflict was undoubtedly economic as the enterprising Singaporeans were economically dominant. The Malaysian government feared Singapore would eventually become dominant politically because of its economic prowess. Indonesian President Sukarno also stirred the pot, provoking dissent among Singapore's Malay minority. And there was religious conflict. The largely Muslim Malays wanted to make Malaysia an officially Muslim nation, which Singapore's Chinese Buddhists opposed.

In the end, Singapore did not secede from Malaysia. The Malaysian government got fed up with this recalcitrant state in their midst and gave it the boot. The old heave ho! And so on August 9, 1965, Singapore became an independent nation. Singapore's Prime Minister since 1959, Lee Kuan Yew, became the Prime Minister of the new country and retained power until 1990. He and his People's Action Party forged a new country.

Much of the world scoffed at Singapore's prospects. Unemployment was high. The country had no national resources and little land. But it did have a key harbour. And, according to Wikipedia, "Singapore invested heavily to promote economic growth. The Economic Development Board was set up in 1961 by Goh Keng Swee, and with the assistance of Dutch economic advisor Albert Winsemius, national economic strategies were formulated to promote Singapore's manufacturing sector. Industrial estates were set up, especially in the reclaimed swampland of Jurong, and government ministers toured the world in order to try to attract foreign investment. The government offered new investors tax holidays of 5–10 years." The country was already well on its way to success when independence came.

Winsemius helped the new country attract investment from big oil companies like Shell and Esso to build refineries. Singapore " became the third largest oil-refining centre in the world by the mid-1970s."

The country also adopted English as its official language and "the education system was designed to be rigorous and intensive, with emphasis on immediately practical, rather than intellectual, applications, such as on technical sciences as opposed to political discussion or philosophy."

The country also had a problem with homelessness and squatter settlements and its consequent poor sanitation and disease. So the government embarked on a massive public housing project to eradicate the problem. "25,000 apartments were built in the first two years." In ten years, the majority of the population was housed in these public projects. But the government had also instituted the Central Provident Fund, a compulsory savings program to which all citizens and residents contributed. In 1968, the government let the people use their CPF funds to buy their housing, effectively privatising the projects.

Singapore also nationalized several major industries including Singapore Power, SingTel and Singapore Airlines. With British withdrawal of military protection, Singapore adopted the Israeli model of national service and has the fourth largest military expenditure per capita after Israel, the United States and Kuwait.

This curious mix of socialism and capitalism saw unemployment drop to 3% in the 1980s and 1990s while GDP grew at 8% a year.

The governing PAP ruled unopposed from 1966 to 1980, winning every seat in every election for fifteen years. In 1981, the Workers' Party of Singapore won its first seat.

The government has been called authoritarian because of its rigid laws and the dominance of the PAP. Even with electoral reforms, the PAP remains in power winning 66% of the popular vote and 82 out of 84 seats in the 2006 election.

The government became notorious for its rigid laws in the 1990s when it introduced capital punishment for drug crimes. It had the second highest rate of executions per capita from 1994 to 1999 with most of the hangings for drug crimes. The country also has corporal punishment for 35 crimes, including vandalism. In 1999, an American teenager became the centre of storm of controversy when he was caned for spray painting a car. Caning is carried out with a rattan switch. The victim is stripped naked, bent over a frame with hands and feet bound and leather covers placed to protect vital organs and genitals from errant blows. Then he is whipped vigorously on the naked buttocks, drawing blood. I wrote about its laws, including the banning of gum and guns in my travel blog earlier today.

When Singapore started mass executions of drug dealers in the 1990s, sci-fi writer William Gibson, author of Necromancer and coiner of the term "cyberspace", visited the country and wrote an extensive article on Singapore's culture called Disneyland with the Death Penalty for Wired magazine in 1993. He paints a picture of a bland albeit pretty place. Censorship exists with a body called the Undesirable Propagation Unit weeding out bad influences (at least in 1993 when Gibson wrote the piece.) As he puts it, "The local papers, including one curiously denatured tabloid, New Paper, are essentially organs of the state, instruments of only the most desirable propagation. This ceaseless boosterism, in the service of order, health, prosperity, and the Singaporean way, quickly induces a species of low-key Orwellian dread. (The feeling that Big Brother is coming at you from behind a happy face does nothing to alleviate this.) It would be possible, certainly, to live in Singapore and remain largely in touch with what was happening elsewhere. Only certain tonalities would be muted, or tuned out entirely, if possible. . . ."

Singapore is a strange place. Beautiful. A wonderful place to visit. Safe. Green. Clean. Thriving and capitalistic. But controlling and restrictive.

But is it totalitarian? Hoppe mentioned Singapore favorably in the quote noted above. It may well fit into his ultra-conservative view of libertarianism - one where covenants restrict undesirable elements, where the society so constituted works to "actively expel those people whose presence within the country constitutes a negative externality (human trash which drives individual property values down)".

And indeed, he argues that a libertarian community "in a covenant...among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society."

Whether Singapore constitutes such a community is doubtful. And I, in fact, am more in tune with Gibson than Hoppe on this. I value diversity and believe a seamier side to society enriches rather than diminishes society, distasteful as it sometimes may be (the human trash Hoppe refers to so disparagingly). I oppose censorship, even of those I disagree with like democrats and communists.

So Singapore, to me, is an enigma. It is rigid, yet enterprising. Draconian, yet just (in the sense that it operates on the rule of law and its government is not capricious. You get a very clear warning when entering the country that drug dealing could be lethal.) As I related, it is not a pure capitalist paradise, but it has made its socialist elements work surprisingly well. The result is fabulous. I love it as a place to visit, as you will see in the continuing series I am writing for my travel blog. One of the loveliest places on earth. My personal experience as a tourist was very positive. But I have my misgivings as had Gibson. I don't know if I could be happy there as a citizen.
}}