----------
... Right now Singapore is where I have been based for the
last two years. I created my company there and now that I am coming from
Singapore, I always get the response, “Oh Singapore, great country isn’t it?” I
am always a little surprised how often I hear that and where I hear that. So I
started to wonder, do we have a case of Libertarian Orientalism actually?
Who are among the admirers of Singapore?
President Saakashvili of Georgia is very much one. When
you go there, they often talk about the Singapore model. You go on and you find
that the Communist Party of China really likes the Singapore model.
Well if you are in Africa, there is a big fan of
Singapore over there. It is, Prime Minister Luc Adolph Tiao of Burkina Faso.
And then there are the Libertarians and you wonder, whoa, how does it all go
together? You look at this little website: GettingOutofAmerica.com that says
that for those of the Libertarian persuasion, this tiny city-state has long
represented their idea of a free market Valhalla. Whoa, big terms!
So I was really wondering how’s it all possible, and I am
here to ask you what do you make out of it? You will have to give me the
answers when we have the discussion later.
What libertarians see mostly are a couple of impressive
facts. This is just ranking in the world, GDP per capita, 3rd out of 187
nations. Economic Freedom Ranking is 2nd out of 144. Global Competiveness
Ranking is 2nd out of 144. Ease of Doing Business 1st of 185, and I don’t think
libertarians look much at the Human Development Index, but if you have a quick
peek at it, it would also be impressive at 18th out of 187. So that is really
impressive and that makes a lot of governments look at Singapore.
See that’s what I am talking about. First of all I must
say a lot of people really don’t know where Singapore actually is, so I don’t
know whether everybody here knows where it is, there it is. That tiny little
spot inside the yellow circle and on any reasonable map you have to circle it,
otherwise it is really too small. Some images that I want to share, this is
actually there at the tip of Malaysia of the Malaysians Peninsula that little
island is an island actually. The merlion used to be the symbol of the
city-state, now it’s really more the three towers. The Marina Bay Sands with
that swimming pool on top of the roof like an arch on top and the Singapore
Airlines. To those that fly a lot in the society of Singapore, I like to say
it’s the preferred choice.
Okay let’s now take the bridge between Singapore and the
libertarian principles. What are the libertarian principles? Quickly I believe,
no, I am quoting here three principles,
1. Individual rights: that we have the right to live the
life that we want to live, the way we want to live it, individually.
2. Spontaneous Order: where basically things and
institutions and processes and procedures arrange themselves in a spontaneous
way.
3. Limited Government: thirdly of course there needs to
be a limited government.
I am quoting here from a speech that David Boaz once
gave. I like these kinds of simplified things it helps a lot. So three simple
principles: individual rights, spontaneous order, and limited government, I
don’t think in this audience I need to explain on any of that.
And I thought okay then, let’s do a libertarian checklist
looking at Singapore, how does it score?
Individual rights
Well first of all, there is no freedom of expression.
Even giving this speech here I must admit, when you have a permanent residency
in Singapore, you must think twice about what you say. It’s strange, but it is.
You have to be careful. This is what a minister has to say, “it is important
for us to ensure that Singaporeans read the right thing”. The ‘right thing’,
that’s a typical statement from the government in Singapore. We want to make
sure that people consume the right kind of information. He said that to the
BBC.
Now, in June, they came up with a new idea. Any website
that reports about Singapore and which has more than 50,000 unique visitors
needs to pay a performance bond which is a $50,000 (dollar) license or in U. S.
dollars a thirty nine thousand dollar ($39,000) license to be allowed to do so.
This basically kills the most critical and underfunded websites that do report
independently about Singaporean politics.
Not surprising then that the Freedom House would rank
Singapore as only partly free, scoring 4 out of 7 on average. This basically
means political rights and civil liberties are not guaranteed, especially the
press in the country is not free. The newspaper there is a joke. It’s really
great if you need to wrap fish or if you want clean your windows, but for
anything else it’s really not really worthwhile. This you can say in Singapore
because everybody thinks so.
Then there is no sex in the city or more precisely no gay
sex in the city. This has been criminalized according to the laws that mutually
consenting adult men cannot have sex with each other. Oral sex was prohibited
and everybody was wondering which position of police would actually be in
charge of checking on that? Though there was a very big demand for that job,
but now they legalized it in 2007.
Actually Singapore is liberalizing because the people are
fed up with this kind of government. There are changes that are happening now
in Singapore as you can see now for example a gay movement the pink dot
movement. This year and 2013 they had a massive uproar of people who all wore
pink. You can’t make statements like you can’t wear pink and sit in a park. So
that’s the pink dot movement and they were very successful this year. People
are just fed up with being told what to say, what to think and what to do. The
political position, well they had a lot of choices between prison and
bankruptcy.
Singapore went so far that the government actually had an
appointed member of opposition in the parliament because they thought that it’s
quite bad the image if it’s all government. We need some opposition, so they
appointed a member of the parliament to be the opposition. People thought it
was also not a good idea. So, that has also changed because you can see now
rallies of the opposition party which unfortunately is the workers party, have
massive out pour again and if you go by the electoral vote it’s quite close for
the government to actually lose power. Good outlook, so things are changing.
The strong man he isn’t there anymore. Well, he is there, but he is not in
power anymore. It is his son and his son is softer than Daddy.
Okay, so looking at our libertarian check list on
individual rights; not really, on this one Singapore definitely failed. You
can’t call that a libertarian system, oppressing individual rights, and I am
only giving you some examples. I can’t give you the entire talk about
everything in Singapore.
Spontaneous Order
Then, let’s all look at spontaneous order. Of, course the
first thing you think about in spontaneous order is can everyone engage in
business? Can you create a company, can you do business, etc. You saw already
that Singapore is ranking very well in this report and this is truly the case.
Singapore ranks number one in the world in this report and already in the first
indicator in starting a business. It says it takes three procedures and three
days to start a company.
This is actually not quite right. I started my own
company. It takes about three hours. It’s amazing, I mean you can just create
you can spend your day creating companies because it’s so easy. It’s really no
problem so, that is truly amazing. The only thing that takes a little while is
your bank then to check whether you’re actually worthy of having a bank
account. You know the usual of what the banks do it takes what about two days
or something, that is the little thing that you’re waiting for to open your corporate
bank account.
I am also starting a business at the moment in Indonesia
and I can tell you it takes longer and it costs a lot of money. But not in
Singapore that one is fantastic. So that speaks a lot for spontaneous order to
have this, starting a business like this. Then if you look at the top right,
the one in red, trading across borders, ranks one. So free trade definitely
that’s the hallmark of Singapore and that’s why we see Singapore I think the
way we look at it like a libertarian Valhalla.
Free trade is really what Singapore is all about
internationally. However, I am always trying to find a hair in the soup. Here
is one about enforcing contracts. Suddenly out of brilliant performance
enforcing contracts isn’t as good, its only ranking 12th because it takes a lot
of procedures and 150 days to enforce your contract so there seems to be
something not as brilliant, but in terms of starting a business and trading
across borders, Singapore definitely, excellent performance.
What I have tried to do, is I tried to look now modestly
at the Economic freedom of the world report to give you some figures from the
freedom to trade report. Here is where freedom to trade international as you
can see Singapore in 2010 ranks 2 with a score of 8.86, so basically that
underlines the same thing; free international trade, Singapore with an
absolutely brilliant performance. This goes really to the philosophy and the
rationale of the country.
