Makes me love Singapore the more. Very pragmatic leadership. Can't be characterized as "right-leaning" or "left-leaning" or whatever...it's like the leaders just sat down and thought, "Let us borrow any idea that works and implement in our country"...grew from third-world levels of poverty to enviable first-world development in a few decades.
I'm not Singaporean and have never visited if you're wondering...
I lived in Singapore 3 years, quite a pleasant city. Super efficient, clean, people polite and smiling. As an expat, the censorship and oppression was only materialized by the absence of a decent art scene. Music, theatre, movies, graphic arts, ... are nowhere to be seen or very mediocre in a city this size. Oh yes, and sure no drugs beyond alcohol.
The expensive car policy is well counterbalanced by good public transportation and cheap fast taxis (no congestion). More convenient than owning a car, imo.
Not just enviable, they have the worlds highest GDP per capita, the only Asian country with a triple AAA rating by all ratings bodies, good integration policies (low crime but basically a 20/20/20/20 split between Buddhism, Atheism, Christianity, and Islam - not completely 20:20:20:20 but can't remember the right numbers and it's close-ish), one of the highest life expectancies in the world, and pretty awesome food!
It's almost like cracking down on crime in a tough way with liberal economics can lead to a great place to live.
Even if Singapore is authoritarian and unfree, if they have high happiness scores, high life expectancies, high standards of living, maybe we have to accept you can have some good authoritarian places to live.
> Can't be characterized as "right-leaning" or "left-leaning" or whatever.
Singapore's story is remarkable, like you said. But it can absolutely be characterized as right-leaning, with a conservative social policy marked by low individual freedom (low tolerance for antisocial behavior, definition of "antisocial" largely in the hands of the government) and high economic freedom (laissez-faire free market capitalism, small government[0]). On the Nolan chart[1], it would fall squarely in the Conservative side.
[0]: At government expenditures of ~15% of GDP, Singapore has by far the smallest government, in economic terms, of all developed countries.
