My take on Singapore is pretty much summed up in the Gibson piece. My conclusions, however, are that Singapore makes one uncomfortable and conflicted; at least it made me feel that way.
Most everyone, I thought, would want to live in a place that is clean, safe, stable and prosperous, where (almost) everyone obeys the laws, but the cost (forget material costs) of creating and maintaining such a place would be more than I could live with. Sure I enjoy all of the former, but a very large part of me could not live with injustice, repression and the means by which such a society is established. I could live in Singapore, but I would get into a lot of trouble, very often.
Hell, I got into trouble, within a couple of months, of teaching at a prestigious university in North Carolina. Within two or three months of my contract, I was sent a reprimand and note, at the top of which it was written that I had to conform to the professional and christian values of the institution. That place was as tidy, clean, and full of laughter and forgetting (as long as you ignored the intellectual marasmus concealed behind the reproduction of mainstream rationalist orthodoxy, at least in the social sciences).
Ismail
Ismail Lagardien
Nihil humani a me alienum puto