-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 05:07 PM 12/7/97 +0800, Harish Pillay wrote:
I am a Singaporean and have lived most of my life in Singapore. I am no lapdog of the government (thank you) nor do I agree with everything the government does. If it is of any interest to you, you can go to my home page for information on dirt that I have posted about the SG govt. You can also go to many other sites all over (both within Singapore and outside)
that discuss a wide array of issues, (www.sintercom.org) for example.
It should be obvious to those who have read my stuff over the years that I am not a fan of Singapore's government. As an anarchist, that would be ridiculous in any case. All that I ever said was that Singapore was freer than lots of other countries that don't get so much bad press. I mentioned Germany and I could have mentioned France. Liberty is commutative as is tyrrany. You can add up the restrictions and arrive at a total. You can't analyze a human institution with mathematical perfection but you can do better than relying purely on emotional stereotypes. I think that many of us ("We Are All Liberals Now" -- The Economist, 1997) ignore economic liberty when comparing regimes. It was this failing in the Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org/) survey "Freedom in the World" (http://www.freedomhouse.org/Political/toc.htm) published since 1981 that led to two competing surveys being published by CATO and Heritage Foundation (as mentioned in an earlier post). Freedom House then retaliated with "World Survey of Economic Freedom" (http://www.freedomhouse.org/Econ/TOC.HTM) which is vague (both Germans and Americans are assigned equal "right to earn a living" scores of 3 even though Germans are much more restricted in that endeavor than Americans). Their survey also totally ignores the "takings issue". A country with a 100% income tax could rank perfectly on their scales. There are bound to be differences of opinion about living conditions in different countries and different weights that individuals would assign to different factors. I was never trying to convince anyone that Singapore is a capitalist paradise and everyone should emulate them. In fact Hong Kong has had a better growth rate recently and was a nicer place to live prior to its late unpleasantness. Personally, I prefer Europe's winner in the economic liberty sweepstakes -- Switzerland -- or the anarchist paradise where they have many laws but no one obeys them -- Northern Italy -- or the US where it remains easy to avoid most of the unpleasant restrictions that our rulers attempt to impose on us. I also am sure that not even the promoters of "Asian Values" can resist the transformative effects of the cash and the personal empowerment that accompany the growth of MarketEarth. DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBNItUQYVO4r4sgSPhAQH+RgP/X/IddUHaQB2jkFMACVOMo8impXSJxTq6 qyWeae2PQHamOlw7OUvfiQML58qgcscj/3KYY/i72pGIvl7J+nplZvy+2WXdpkYP ZzhMRzFWvbq3Ezvq/Xu57mYgqq2CuspioO9Ys4h/nhbUOSmCg0pC2yYuVgBnOnWM HJN/Zn7GCTE= =5I6e -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----