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Singapore is famous for its capitalism.\u00a0 In some ways, the state itself has grown and continues to function as a kind of corporation, with citizens playing the role of employees subject to strict policies and the role\u00a0 of shareholders, benefiting from the success and prudence of management.<\/p>\n
A friend of AsiaWheeling and Harvard graduate plans to move to Singapore before the year is out.\u00a0 Because of his high caliber education, he can receive a passport to the nation-state within two years.\u00a0 With tax and regulatory concessions available for industries the government wishes to encourage, a growing number of alternative investment managers and global financial institutions are migrating their legal entities, their employees, and their (albeit low) tax dollars to Singapore.<\/p>\n Citizens of Singapore are healthy, courteous, and enjoy much greater income equality than Hong Kong or New York, alleviating many social class pressures.\u00a0 A businessman in Hong Kong once told me, “If you ask a taxi driver in Hong Kong how big his apartment is, he’ll tell you it’s 389.27 square feet exactly.\u00a0 If you ask a Singaporean taxi driver, he’ll tell you it’s somewhere around 400 square feet.”\u00a0 Singapore’s social and economic policies have resulted in this relaxed, non-competitive attitude, which encourages community involvement and a sense of social responsibility.<\/p>\n On the MRT in Singapore, we saw a young man in a fitted baseball cap volunteer his seat when an elderly man boarded the train.\u00a0 On the Tokyo subway, even the priority seats for elderly, disabled, and pregnant are filled with dozing salarymen during rush hours.\u00a0 Singapore smacks of a utopia.<\/p>\n But Singapore has a dark side.\u00a0 It’s a place where drug addicts are caned, rounds of layoffs can happen under the guise of a fire drill<\/a>, and the government’s tactic for squelching dissidents is to sue them for sedition, bankrupting them with legal fees.\u00a0 Multicultural harmony is advertised and prided, though the city still suffers from racial divisions and sports neighborhoods that double as ethnic enclaves.<\/p>\n Prostitution finds its way into a legal gray area, with the odd-number buildings of certain districts designated as mid-rise brothel\/bar complexes.\u00a0 Karaoke bars of ill-repute lubricate business deals by allowing expenses to be reimbursed by what appears to be a shockingly high bar tab.<\/p>\n With punishments for petty crimes so high, desperation seems to reign, as human nature enjoys a bit of sin.\u00a0 Singapore’s underbelly proves that the city is not fully the nursery rhyme it purports to be. Dig deep enough and you’ll find plenty that smacks of a dystopia.<\/p>\n Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Give me the luxuries of life, and I will do without the necessities.”\u00a0 In the increasingly interconnected global economy, analytical minds will be the backbone of competitive development.\u00a0 However it will be this analytical firepower, coupled with creativity and passion, that will really define innovation to come.\u00a0 Without developing the creative faculties of its people, Singapore may find itself in an unexpected state of imperfection.<\/p>\n Loading image<\/p>\n Click anywhere to cancel<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Image unavailable\n<\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Singapore is famous for its capitalism.\u00a0 In some ways, the state itself has grown and continues to function as a kind of corporation, with citizens playing the role of employees subject to strict policies and the role\u00a0 of shareholders, benefiting from the success and prudence of management. Separated from Malaysia in 1965, perennial statesman Lee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure-capitalist","category-singapore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1814"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1878,"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions\/1878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiawheeling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/P1273033.jpg\" "\\"Singapore")
<\/a>Separated from Malaysia in 1965, perennial statesman Lee Kwan Yew oversaw its rise from an underdeveloped colonial outpost to a first world Asian tiger.\u00a0 It ranks 23 in the 2009 Human Development Index<\/a>, above Hong Kong, South Korea, and Greece.\u00a0 The de facto financial center of Southeast Asia, Singapore boasts enviably high rule of law, investment in education, and shrewd policies attracting the globally educated to immigrate.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/P1283138-300x225.jpg\" "\\"Cab")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/IMG_0598-300x225.jpg\" "\\"Sleeping")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/IMG_5216.jpg\" "\\"Tamil")
Road crews and other blue collar jobs appear to be dominated by the Tamils, whose script is invariably last on the multilingual municipal signs. Singapore’s multicultural composition can also spark conflict.\u00a0 For Chinese New Year, McDonald’s released a set of the 12 zodiac doraemon<\/a>, but had replaced the pig with a doraemon holding a heart. \u00a0 Chinese New Year happened to fall on Valentine’s Day, and the pig was certainly not Halal.\u00a0 In an attempt not to alienate their Muslim customers, they outraged the Chinese community,\u00a0 and began producing a new toy zodiac pig, and posted the apology below.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/IMG_5237.jpg\" "\\"McDonalds")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/P1273099-300x225.jpg\" "\\"Singapore")
<\/a>Many of those to whom we explained the experiment of AsiaWheeling admitted they would have loved to have engaged in such a project in their youth, but even with the means, it was simply not in their consciousness.\u00a0 The education system, which churns out highly analytical graduates, coupled with the mandatory military conscription, which teaches hierarchy and teamwork, somehow misses out on equally developing creativity.<\/p>\nGreased Lightbox – Update available (v0.18)<\/a><\/p>\n\u2192<\/a>\u2190<\/a>+<\/a>–<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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