From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 03:05:16 +0800
To: jay holovacs <holovacs@idt.net>
Subject: Singapore
In-Reply-To: <199712051359.IAA10734@u1.farm.idt.net>
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19971205134306.007187b0@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 06:44 AM 12/5/97 -0500, jay holovacs wrote:
>This post has a strange deja vu to it. I can remember back in the '60s when 
revolutionary wannabes would talk of the glorious peoples paradise while 
living in their comfortable suburban homes. How the workers' education system 
was open to all, no one was unemployed...

I don't think that Singapore is a fabulous place to live but its total 
freedom is probably greater than Germany or France.  Our total freedom in the 
US is greater than Singapore's.

It has just been getting attacked by those who accept the greater freedom 
violations of many other countries including many of those in the EU.

Germans lack many speech and association rights.  Germany has asked the US to 
arrest and extradite Americans for speech crimes.  They have mandatory 
address registration with the government (as does Singapore).  On the other 
hand, Germans have very restrictive labor and commerce laws, high taxes, and 
other laws that Singapore doesn't have.  Germany has mandatory 
"certification" (licensing) for almost every job in the country.  Singapore 
has some of these sorts of restrictions too but because of its other economic 
freedoms, it is freer than Germany.

Germany steals 50% of GDP and blows it on cigareets and whiskey and wild, 
wild, women.  Singapore steals only 20% of GDP (and requires an additional 
20% mandatory personally-owned retirement savings from salaries).  
Singaporeans are thus freer to use their own money than Germans.  

Singapore is unfree in many ways but freer than many other countries not 
usually attacked as tyrranies.

DCF 
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