Singapore also provides many services to its citizens that the U.S. does not. For instance, approximately 80 percent of Singaporeans live in government housing, which are not at all like housing projects in the U.S. Singaporeans own their own apartments; each Singaporean citizen has the chance to buy an apartment from the government at cost and to take out a no-interest loan to pay for it. As a result, every Singaporean is a homeowner and has a stake in the society. The housing complexes contain take-out restaurants designed to cater to two-earner households, grocery stores, day-care centers, old-folks homes and other facilities designed to make the housing complexes into communities. An individual living in the complex can even resell the apartment on the private market to pay for a home somewhere else. We in the U.S. could do a lot worse than to model our public housing on Singapore’s.

Additionally, Singapore has a form of universal health care that takes advantage of market forces to make the coverage efficient. Everyone must make a small co-payment for services, and if one chooses, one can make a larger co-payment and get more comfortable service—a bigger bed but not better medicine. That way the people who can afford to spend on health care receive more amenities, and their fees (as well as taxes) subsidize those who cannot. And, since everyone has to pay a co-payment, the system keeps wasteful spending down.

Although Singapore has created a lot of good with its peculiar system, I can’t deny that Big Brother is unnerving. There is a real chilling effect on public debate in Singapore because of the security apparatus. Newspapers and other media are subject to outright censorship and are vulnerable to political libel suits. The Internal Security Act gives the government authority to jail without trial anyone accused of trying to subvert the state. This looming menace gives any political discussion in Singapore a frightening tone, and there are some Singaporeans who choose to avoid the subject altogether. Despite a few opposition figures, the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has been in power since Singapore’s independence in 1965, faces no credible threat to its power.

The PAP and its leader, Lee Kwan Yew, have managed to create a prosperous state, but at the cost of personal and civil liberty. Of course, there are many countries in Southeast Asia (such as Indonesia) that offer their citizens neither liberty nor prosperity. So few countries have managed the difficult transition from Third World poverty to modern prosperity that Singapore’s achievement—at whatever cost—seems remarkable, and perhaps even admirable.

Thomas McKean Dougherty ’03, a Crimson editor, is a social studies concentrator in Currier House.