Tag Archives: Singapore

sirens on emergency vehicles: “more harm than good”?

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I knew it – all those sirens on ambulances and fire trucks tearing around town might not be improving outcomes. They are bad for our hearing (especially for the people working on the trucks) and might startle drivers into making mistakes or sudden unpredictable moves. Sure, the idea is that if you are having a heart attack or stroke the second count. But according to this article at least, the data just don’t support the idea that those sirens are getting the paramedics to you faster.

Americans love our sirens. When I lived in Singapore for a couple years, one thing I noticed was that police, fire trucks (which were often more like vans), and ambulances didn’t use sirens much. Now, Singapore tore down most of its historic buildings (which you could argue is sad), which means its buildings are mostly very modern standardized high rises. I think that is one reason they don’t need the big fire trucks. Their streets are wide and well maintained (this is not great for pedestrians or people on bicycles). They also do congestion pricing on a major scale so they just don’t have the traffic we have (I support this, but you could argue it is inequitable because the rich can afford to drive while everyone else takes public transportation. The public transportation is very good and reliable however.) Sirens aside, I found Singapore awful in terms of urban noise pollution and wore ear plugs much of the time I was there. The noise didn’t seem to bother most of the locals or people from nearby countries.

what Singapore does well

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After reading this long article in the London Review of Books, I find myself reflecting on my own experience in Singapore from 2010-2013. Here’s my take on what they do well. First, they educate everybody. Everybody is not an international math champion, despite what you might think, but everybody gets a solid education through at least a two-year vocational degree. Second, they build their economy by attracting foreign investment and being a center of trade. Third, they have rational guest worker policies for both skilled and unskilled workers. I think all this keeps the economy humming along pretty well. Then, they have rational tax policies. They help the population build wealth through a subsidized housing program (often called “public housing” in the international press, but think of it more like a condo you own with the government as your condo association. If you meet certain requirements (which include race and fertility, policies that would not translate well everywhere), you essentially get to buy your condo at a discount and sell it at full price. Then there is essentially a forced saving scheme, which is invested in the well-managed sovereign wealth fund and given back to people in annuity form at retirement age.

That’s what I liked. I felt the focus on economics resulted in a society where a lot of people really are all about money, and people are somewhat cold to each other. The idea of technocratic government and leadership development works up to a point, but it results in a certain arrogance that does not always match ability. They have comprehensive and highly efficient public transportation, but they still separate residential and commercial land uses and this results in really long commutes for people. And if you are not from there, the place just feels a bit crowded, loud and claustrophobic after awhile.

I had the fortune of experiencing an election while I lived there, and I came away thinking that their one-party-dominated system is not all that different than our two-similar-party-dominated system, at least in terms of barriers to entry and resistance to change. But overall, I think their system is working better in the interest of their people than the U.S. system in recent years.

Zakaria on Singapore

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Fareed Zakaria thinks Singapore has more “social harmony” than the U.S. Uncritically quoting a deputy prime minister:

I asked the country’s deputy prime minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, what he regarded as the country’s biggest success. I imagined that he would talk about economics, since the city-state’s per capita GDP now outstrips that of the United States, Japan and Hong Kong. He spoke instead about social harmony.

“We were a nation that was not meant to be,” Shanmugaratnam said. The swamp-ridden island, expelled from Malaysia in 1965, had a polyglot population of migrants with myriad religions, cultures and belief systems. “What’s interesting and unique about Singapore, more than economics, are our social strategies. We respected peoples’ differences yet melded a nation and made an advantage out of diversity,” he said in an interview, echoing remarks he made at the St. Gallen Symposium last month in Switzerland…

I believe that Singapore is an example of a diverse society that has been able to live in harmony and that we could learn something from.

I had similar impressions when visiting Singapore. I had a very different impression when I lived there for three years. My impression was that families in Singapore are very, very strong, but relations between strangers, regardless of race or religion, are very, very weak. People don’t love or hate each other, because they don’t care about each other or have any interest in each other at all. I didn’t spend a lot of time around groups of Americans while I was there, so when I would occasionally find myself in a group of Americans, what always struck me was the sort of easy banter and camaraderie that Americans have, even when they are strangers to each other. Despite our despicable racial history, this is deeply engrained in our culture at this point and it is something we take completely for granted until and unless we spend some time in a society where it is not there. My conclusion from my personal experience was that Singapore may be pleasant and peaceful, as long as things are going well economically, but that social glue is not there, particularly for the younger generations who have known nothing but wealth seeking and consumerism as the dominant culture. I am not sure the country will be resilient some day when adversity finally comes, as it always does. I think people may turn on each other. Lee Kuan Yew, who led the country through the difficult times the deputy prime minster mentions above, understood this when he repeatedly cautioned that Singapore is not yet a true nation. Incidentally, he would point to China and Japan (not the U.S. or other western countries) as examples of “true nations” that always come through no matter what. I hope the current leadership understands what he meant. I wish Singaporeans all the best.