Item — HN Reader

I agree. I worked in Singapore for a short while and I was so very impressed by the people and the government.

Singapore is a great place. It is breathtaking to see a government govern in the interests of its people. I live in the USA and we have two institutions, the democratic party and the republican party, that do little except cater to special interests.

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I remember when I was younger there was a TV series showing the differences between how things are done in Singapore and my home country. The show showed how efficient, clean, organized, fair Singapore is. An example, how they prevent traffic jams by providing licenses to roads which forced people to find and organize ride shares. Fast forward to a few years ago, I had the privilege to fly there for a few days on vacation. I got into 2 taxis there. One of them explained how corrupt the country was by the banking industry and the other, more memorable one, was a guy in his 70s that still had to work long houes while his wife was on her death bed at home. He called her while I was in the taxi, I saw the conversation and burst out crying myself. I ended up tipping him 100 USD.

Singapore can undoubtedly be brutal to some. But it's surrounded by countries where that brutal existence is the norm for almost everyone. My dad tells stories like that about his village in Bangladesh. He has a hard time denying my kids treats when they ask. When he was a kid, one of his cousins had asked for his favorite meal and his parents told him they'd have it the next day. But he got a fever and died overnight. That's a common story in Bangladesh, and it used to be a common story in Singapore. But in my dad's lifetime, Singapore became richer than Europe, while Bangladesh is still mired in hopeless poverty.

The poverty and dysfunction in Asian countries feels inescapable and permanent. My dad wanted to take my kids to see his village, but they overthrew the government last year so those plans are on hold indefinitely. I have no confidence that Bangladesh will ever be a place I want to take my kids. Singapore somehow managed to escape that trap. If it took a brutal, regimented society and economy to achieve that, then so be it.

The ironic thing is that the latter taxi driver I mentioned was actually Bangladeshi-Singaporean (I believe ~9% of Singaporeans are of Indian descent). Reading the book Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus really opened my eyes to the instability and poverty in Bangladesh.

Yeah, Yunus is good at self promotion. But people like him are the reason that poor man’s wife died alone, thousands of miles away from her family and homeland. You see that story as a failure of Singapore. But in reality it’s a failure of Bangladesh, its founders, and its people. Singaporeans could have been in that same situation today if it hadn’t been for the actions of its leaders after independence.