It is. The question is how much freedom and liberty should a society give up in exchange for it? I don’t think there is any one right answer… but no chewing gum is a bit extreme in my opinion.
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I have some respect for the gum ban. The tile surfaces outside Wimbledon Station are ruined by gum stains, and it lowers the feel of the area. Each time I notice it, I admire the Singapore ban.
I also admire how clean some places in North Korea are.
clean is not a bad thing, and urine in public spaces is certainly dispicable. Generic discussion about control is pointless without taking accounts of specific measures and situations.
the entire idea of 'giving up' freedom isn't right. Abstract freedoms are always embedded in a social context. The reason you have the individually free ability to walk across the road is because everyone else follows the rules. If everyone drove through traffic randomly, you wouldn't even have the capacity to exercise any meaningful freedom. Part of having a proper understanding of liberty is that recognition of authority is a precondition for it and not an obstacle.
Personal freedom does not stand in contrast to, but is embedded in social order, and that's why Singaporean's aren't giving anything up. Ask a woman whether she's more free to walk through town in Singapore at 1 am or a bad part of any typically 'free' city. It's not without irony that people in China basically faced barely any covid restrictions over a year while here in Europe everyone was locked into their apartments for months by government mandate, complaining about the lack of freedoms in other parts of the world.
Your formulation leads to "freedom is obedience," which is absurd. Freedom is about being able to do what you want. It's one thing to say that absolute freedom is not ideal, it's another to say that restriction of choice increases freedom.
Singapore and China gain something but they're also giving something up. People can disagree over whether that trade if justified but not over whether there's a trade.
It may sound absurd, but it really isn't. Hedonistic choice, i.e. to "do what you want" is not perceived as freedom but as anxiety. Someone who lives alone in his flat and works 20 different gig jobs and shoots heroin whenever he wants is in that superficial sense 'free', but in reality the opposite is the case, he's subject to basically just instinct, which is the worst form of oppression, ask any addict.
Freedom or liberty in a more authentic, humanistic sense, also in the same way religious people understand it (no coincidence that Islam literally translates to 'submission' (to god)) grounds you in reason, reality and requires that understanding what legitimate authority is like. Only from that point can you actually start to make genuinely free decisions, you need to be set free from(!) a whole bunch of things first.
It's also btw why so many young people today, less coerced than ever before, don't feel free at all, just disoriented, and why they flock to political authoritarianism. The sort of relativism invited in by not properly understanding the relationship between authority and freedom has the ironical result of creating demand for some of the very worst forms of oppression.
You gotta serve somebody but the whole point of libertarian freedom is that you choose when and how to give it up. You can join the army, marry, adopt a religion, start a job, have children, or simply make moral judgements about the world and attempt to live by them (note that many of those things are not "hedonistic").
Libertarian freedom was hard won, it works, and it would be a damn shame to give it up due to the anxiety experienced by 20-somethings. Relativism is in no way the certain outcome of liberal societies. To the extent that there is a problem, it's non-judgmentalism, the trendy idea that it is suspect to render judgements and live by them.
I am from India, and the freedom we won wasn't libertarian freedom. In fact, most independence movements were driven by reversing colonization and racist governance, not seeking libertarian freedoms. Most nations that achieved independence would laugh at this concept.
I disagree. Banning chewing gum is closest to banning open urination. Restrictions on "freedom" such as not being allowed to dump toxic waste into lakes etc, stem from preventing tragedy of the commons - not from demanding obedience. The same goes for vaccine mandates.
In fact, one of the primary responsibilities of the government is to prevent tragedy of the commons. Everything else can be driven privately.
I'm not arguing that people should be able to piss in the street or dump toxic waste. Restrictions on freedom are often justified. My point is that they are restrictions; the fact that a restriction may be good does not magically make it something other than a restriction.
I'm aware that most places in the world are not liberal. Fine with me. There's no need for every country or culture to share the same values. But in countries where libertarian freedom is a value, e.g. the US and UK, it should be defended.
There is a difference between liberal and libertarian. Libertarianism has a fairly narrow support even in the US. Those who argue for less regulation also want to ban abortion. The most libertarian representation in US politics was Greenspan and he seemed to walk back on it in 2008. It's a niche point of view in the United states.
Moreover, if libertarianism has value, it should be defensible without appeal to the support or lack of support in popular culture.
I'm not talking about libertarianism in the context of American politics. Liberal and libertarian have similar (or even the same) meaning in political philosophy. The basic idea is that they view freedom as non interference.
> but no chewing gum is a bit extreme in my opinion.
People, especially the ones who have never travelled to Singapore, need to stop rehashing this story of old.
Chewing gum can be freely purchased in Singapore from a pharmacy. No, one won't be searched at the airport and/or canned for bringing their own chewing gum into the city.
Can only be purchased with a letter from a doctor or dentist, your National ID number is recorded and you can only buy small amounts.
You won’t go to jail for a pack of gum in your luggage but you will be punished if caught bribing in large quantities (likely a fine or if a foreigner, banned from coming to SG).
What’s the point of gum?
What’s the point of flavored water?
There isn’t one.
You don't really give up anything in Singapore.