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Experiencing Singapore (11): The Joys of Law and Order

There is the tried joke that Singapore is a ‘fine’ city, the joke being that there is no end to the fines you might end up paying. It is true, the number of possible violations that come with hefty fines is not insignificant, and neither are the fines. Eating or drinking on public transport costs you a few hundred Singapore dollars, and so does smoking in public or littering. Logging into an open WiFi network without permission of the owner isn’t cheap either. You may think of this what you want, and if you’ve been brought up in the West, you may recoil. However, I think that law and order are great.

In short, anything you shouldn’t do anyway is forbidden. If you do it, you’ll get fined, caned, or killed, and I absolutely love it! The general problem is that it takes only a few assholes to ruin things for everybody. Life could be so great if everybody would just follow the rules, and if that is too abstract a concept to follow for some, how about a simple guideline like, “Don’t do something in public that others can have a perfectly valid reason to feel offended by?” No, your made-up gender pronouns don’t count. We’re talking about the real world. In that vein, let me ask you a few questions:

Have you ever been to the cinema, only to enjoy the presence of a group of Arabs who talk loudly, throw around popcorn, and threaten violence to anyone who dares to ask them to keep it down?

Have you ever walked down a street full of litter?

Have you ever walked past or, heaven forbid, stepped over a homeless person?

Have you ever had to endure the presence of a drug dealer, or, worse see people consume drugs in public?

Have you ever seen graffiti on a building, maybe even on one that has only recently been completed?

Have you ever had to endure a smoker in a non-smoking zone?

Have you ever walked past a bus stop someone decided to vandalize “just for fun”?

Have you ever had a public toilet that was not flushed?

All of those are rhetorical questions. If you live in the West, the answer to all of the above is likely yes. In Singapore, on the other hand, you don’t have to deal with any of that bullshit because people just stick to the damn rules. Everybody knows what the rules are. People follow it. Yes, it can be that simple. If it takes a fine of S$1,000 to make dipshits flush a public toilet, then so be it.

As a consequence of a fine culture, even places that look like genuine shitholes in the West, like fast-food restaurants, are spotlessly clean. Here, look at the floor of a McDonald’s restaurant in a very busy area:

Yes, this is the floor of a McDonald’s!

In the West, presumably the floor isn’t that clean right after opening a new franchise, let alone during the day.

In Singapore you’ll also see absurdities like carpeting in shopping malls. It’s only absurd to a Westerner. After all, in the West there would be a bunch of utterly worthless teens or adults competing to be the first to spoil fine carpeting. On the other hand, in Singapore a mall owner can put down thousands of square meters of carpeting and rest assured that it will still look clean not just 24 hours later, but years later as well.

I have to say that after my stay in Singapore I am even more disgusted by the West than I used to be. It’s one thing to ponder how good life could be without assholes. It’s another if you go abroad and you have to pinch yourself to ensure you’re not dreaming. If you’re a cucked Westerner who takes offense by that, then be my guest, go to your local McDonald’s, reserve a seat by putting your wallet and your iPhone on the table and while you order, please do tell off some Arabs that they shouldn’t throw around food, and one the way back, tell every drug dealer you come across that what they are doing is illegal. Hey, why not also ask every non-white person who smokes in any non-smoking area you enter that they should abide by the rules? If you do that, please contact me privately. I’d like to take out life insurance in your name so that I can make some money off your misfortune.

My authoritarian utopia may be your authoritarian hellhole. However, when I read that Singapore amended the constitution to strip a Marxist conspirator, Tan Wah Piow, off his citizenship, I grinned from ear to ear. That was back in 1987, though. Today, Singapore is still governed by an iron fist. If you don’t intend to do drugs, vandalize, or attempt to overthrow the government, you’ll have nothing to worry. Singapore is not an authoritarian hellhole. Instead, it is an authoritarian paradise.


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5 thoughts on “Experiencing Singapore (11): The Joys of Law and Order

  1. The murder rate substituted for a benchmark for crime would rank Singapore and Canada at the same level. Yet you seem to think a lot is wrong with Canada. Including its president. Isn’t this new found love of yours to Singapore an example of confirmation bias and representativeness with base rate neglect? The murder rate is not just a fluke though, I would say that barring the effects of the Canadian housing crisis of the recent past, Canada is by far the better country between the two. By the way, Canada archived this with a high influx of immigrants. No conscription is a good thing too by the way.

    The people there in Canada seems to be more … whats the right word, soulful to me as well compared to those soul-fucking-less Singaporeans.

    1. I just did some quick online research according to which the murder rate (murders per 100,000 inhabitants) in Canada is between 6 and 7 times higher than in Singapore.

      1. Not in where I lived. In Quebec City, there were a total of six murders in the years 2005-2017. In population of about five hundred thousand, it amounts to a lower rate of murder than that of Singapore. Which is comparable in population size although not in land size.

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