Freedoms are not "inherent". If you put humans in a desert, the strongest will eventually rule the weakest, and people will be unequal before the law. You certainly won't get "freedom" under any definition I know of the term.
To be more specific, I define individual rights as encompassing the right to conduct any activity you wish so long as you do not infringe on other's rights (including the commons, which are occasionally left out of Western definitions and particularly well managed in Singapore). Rights require enforcement, so that the man with the biggest stick does not get to violate the rights of others. Every man equal before the law, a concept pioneered by the Magna Carta, refined by John Locke, and implemented most famously by the Founding Fathers of the United States (for the first time in the history of mankind, without compromise or exception). Most people, except for some libertarian anarchists, agree that this is the proper role of government, that it should have a monopoly on force for that reason.
A people gets together and defines a set of rules to create a state and government that will enforce these individual rights at the exclusion of all other entities, with every man equal before the law. The government's purpose becomes the enforcement of individual rights, and its "freedom index" can be measured by both its efficiency in enforcing rights for all, and its degree of infringing rights. This is implemented via justice, which arbitrages disputes, the police, which enforces the decisions, and the army which protects citizen against external threats to rights infringment. The casus belli makes it necessary to infringe rights to a certain extent by confiscating property in order to finance enforcement, the extent of infringement depending on the expense required, with conscription being the most extreme and desperate measure.
The early United States were pretty extremist about it, with no (national) Navy for almost a decade (and Jefferson being opposed to one permanently) until the Barbary pirates forced the government to raise what were initially one-off taxes to create what became a standing Navy in 1794. Even during WWII, the government preferred issuing war bonds than increasing taxes to finance the war effort.
How does Singapore fit into this? The degree of rights infringement to which the government lends itself is always justified. Conscription? Well, both neighbours are or were hostile states and the region is not exactly a mainstay of political stability, but Singapore's enormous and well funded armed forces are a very powerful deterrent. Is it necessary today? That's a long debate which the Singaporeans are continuously having, with the conclusion so far being yes. The chewing gum ban? A pragmatic decision implemented as the lowest cost solution to damage being done to the private property of SMRT corporation and the annoyance of its millions of customers (who happen to be citizen).
The tough penalties for drug trade? They stem from a long history of drug use in Asia creating significant costs for the commons be it in increased crime or in broken populations, we're not talking about Valley developers enjoying a spliff in their basement whilst watching the latest Silicon Valley, we're talking opium addicts in Clarke Quay overlooking the brackish waters of the Singapore River then famous for its stink.
The freedom of speech restrictions? They fit in basically two categories: national safety (such as those making racist speech illegal, preserving the country from flashpoints such as the 1964 riots), and libel. On the latter, the world is a big place and Singapore is small; if there was value in the libel suits (such as the recent CPF debate), why wasn't the information released abroad? The foreign media loves a Singapore-critical story and would have a field day giving PR to any valid criticism.
Libel exists for a reason, which is that real damage is caused by unfounded rumors (see aforementioned Herman Cain campaign last primary), and citizen and entities ought to legally be able to protect themselves against such damage, which they aren't in many Western countries where well placed campaigns can rapidly destroy someone without much consequence for the rumor spreader.
Citizen being exiled? All the ones I had a look at were openly communist or had ties to communists; in the 1960s, those were effectively enemy agents in a state of war, Mao's teams set off thousands of bombs in neighbouring Hong Kong and Suharto's way of dealing with the "problem" in Indonesia was to slaughter over half a million people with suspected ties to the PKI; let's not even talk about Latin America and things like Condor. I think exile is a comparatively much more acceptable way to deal with such opposition than systematic murder, and this is a credit to LKY's management of such crises.
Where Singapore shines, in an almost unique way globally (Switzerland might fit to an extent) is in the degree to which it does not impede the freedom to trade. I think the most important part of that today is the freedom of movement and doing business with foreigners, via the visa policy and lack of minimum wage. Friedman thought minimum wage would increase unemployment, but its real effect in the United States was to push around 11 million workers into illegality (80% of unskilled workers), and thus severe curtailment of their rights (when you are scared of La Migra, you do not go to the police). Singapore considers foreign citizen as guests, with rights granted on an increasing basis depending on salary. It's a visionary policy which is rarely commented upon because immigration is a loaded subject, because the real topic of immigration is one of cultural and racial replacement as immigrants settle down and change the makeup of your population (imagine if say, Sweden opened its door to a million new immigrants a year today). It takes enormous courage to formulate policies that effectively allow for large changes in the cultural makeup of your electorate and I can't think of any other country that does it to the same extent (perhaps Australia, where about a quarter of the population is first or second gen foreign if I recall well; and of course the United States right up to the mid-20th century). So most countries restrict the right of citizen to trade labour with foreign citizen, and freedom of movement across their borders. Singapore doesn't, or not much.
Then you look at restrictions on consumption. Guns are not banned, they are merely very expensive to own - a permit for a non NS-man involves a $3k/year membership to a gun club. In the United States, real estate is plenty and the police cannot expect to be the first line of defence everywhere, so, particularly in states like Alaska (where a bear might be waiting on your driveway) and the rural states (to the bewilderment of city dwellers in California) guns become an important right to citizen. In Singapore, which is almost 100% high density housing and has an exceptionally efficient police force, this is not an issue. Cars are also expensive to own, to curtail the damage to the commons (roads, and air quality) that comes with high car ownership. A quick trip to Hong Kong (or, for that matter, London) and you rapidly understand why this was implemented.
A last, and very important point if we're comparing to the United States is the government's approach to business competition. Temasek and GIC are big investors in Singtel, yet they allowed and encouraged many competitors to develop; I am most familiar with the team from MyRepublic whose growth has been spectacular and whose founding was determined by the extremely low CAC for telecom in the country. In France, Xavier Niel fought tooth and nail to have the permission to run a telephone network against the existing oligopoly which had many powerful friends in government. In the UK, Virgin was the first company to successfully fight the BA-led legacy airline oligopoly; BA went as far as offering free flights "as a national service" to MPs and it was only Virgin's diversification which gave it the reserves and time to beat BA's long price war. In the United States, in contrast, lobbying is a huge ticket on most companies' P&L, and anti-competitive legislation being introduced is almost a standard and accepted way of doing business (e.g. Rick Santorum trying to stop the National Weather Service from making its data public, on behalf of the people who funded his campaign - a textbook anticompetitive move which should be highly illegal and is definitely anti-constitutional).
There are a few laws (such as 377A) which (oddly) nobody brought up yet that are a holdover from the British colonial legislature and haven't been voted out yet, for cultural reasons. I think it's a matter of time, as the nation evolves these things will too.
So, under that framework, where is Singapore's rights infringement? Which of my arguments do you disagree with?
"a concept pioneered by the Magna Carta, refined by John Locke, and implemented most famously by the Founding Fathers of the United States (for the first time in the history of mankind, without compromise or exception)"
The mere fact that (at least some of) those Founding Fathers had slaves acts against the "without compromise or exception" argument. As for Magna Charta, it was not "pioneering" anything, because comparable arrangements, even in a formal written form, existed long before. So you may say that it was "pioneered" only in the north-western Europe in order to be accurate (and I can't be sure about that either)!
I don't think it's particularly productive to nitpick on the origins of freedom; you can go back a long way, even to Hammurabi, but virtually all free first world countries today (except, perhaps, Switzerland?) derive their individual rights from the concepts pioneered by the events that led to the Magna Carta, that is, the first (famous) time that citizen decided that kings and the aristocracy (and later, religions) were not above the law.
I do agree with you regarding the Founding Fathers; it was worse than this, as despite willingness from several of the Fathers to end slavery there and then (one could argue that Washington's manumission of all his slaves at the end of his life indicated his vision for an equal future), those who were slave owners pushed hard to keep the practice going and consider slaves as property to be protected, and the Fathers compromised. As we know, it took over half a century until the matter was settled militarily.
Nevertheless, they did not need to change the philosophy of the country, merely to affirm the status of slaves as human beings covered by the protection of individual rights, unlike, say, the Ancients (such as Aristotle, one of the fathers of reason), who happily justified slavery as natural and a perfectly justifiable practice in a modern free society. To put it down in software terms, whilst the model was sound, the implementation was lacking. There was no previous, compromise-free, sound model. Washington could have called himself King, he chose President, setting such an example that the United States has yet to yield to a tyrant.
To be more specific, I define individual rights as encompassing the right to conduct any activity you wish so long as you do not infringe on other's rights (including the commons, which are occasionally left out of Western definitions and particularly well managed in Singapore). Rights require enforcement, so that the man with the biggest stick does not get to violate the rights of others. Every man equal before the law, a concept pioneered by the Magna Carta, refined by John Locke, and implemented most famously by the Founding Fathers of the United States (for the first time in the history of mankind, without compromise or exception). Most people, except for some libertarian anarchists, agree that this is the proper role of government, that it should have a monopoly on force for that reason.
A people gets together and defines a set of rules to create a state and government that will enforce these individual rights at the exclusion of all other entities, with every man equal before the law. The government's purpose becomes the enforcement of individual rights, and its "freedom index" can be measured by both its efficiency in enforcing rights for all, and its degree of infringing rights. This is implemented via justice, which arbitrages disputes, the police, which enforces the decisions, and the army which protects citizen against external threats to rights infringment. The casus belli makes it necessary to infringe rights to a certain extent by confiscating property in order to finance enforcement, the extent of infringement depending on the expense required, with conscription being the most extreme and desperate measure.
The early United States were pretty extremist about it, with no (national) Navy for almost a decade (and Jefferson being opposed to one permanently) until the Barbary pirates forced the government to raise what were initially one-off taxes to create what became a standing Navy in 1794. Even during WWII, the government preferred issuing war bonds than increasing taxes to finance the war effort.
How does Singapore fit into this? The degree of rights infringement to which the government lends itself is always justified. Conscription? Well, both neighbours are or were hostile states and the region is not exactly a mainstay of political stability, but Singapore's enormous and well funded armed forces are a very powerful deterrent. Is it necessary today? That's a long debate which the Singaporeans are continuously having, with the conclusion so far being yes. The chewing gum ban? A pragmatic decision implemented as the lowest cost solution to damage being done to the private property of SMRT corporation and the annoyance of its millions of customers (who happen to be citizen).
The tough penalties for drug trade? They stem from a long history of drug use in Asia creating significant costs for the commons be it in increased crime or in broken populations, we're not talking about Valley developers enjoying a spliff in their basement whilst watching the latest Silicon Valley, we're talking opium addicts in Clarke Quay overlooking the brackish waters of the Singapore River then famous for its stink.
The freedom of speech restrictions? They fit in basically two categories: national safety (such as those making racist speech illegal, preserving the country from flashpoints such as the 1964 riots), and libel. On the latter, the world is a big place and Singapore is small; if there was value in the libel suits (such as the recent CPF debate), why wasn't the information released abroad? The foreign media loves a Singapore-critical story and would have a field day giving PR to any valid criticism.
Libel exists for a reason, which is that real damage is caused by unfounded rumors (see aforementioned Herman Cain campaign last primary), and citizen and entities ought to legally be able to protect themselves against such damage, which they aren't in many Western countries where well placed campaigns can rapidly destroy someone without much consequence for the rumor spreader.
Citizen being exiled? All the ones I had a look at were openly communist or had ties to communists; in the 1960s, those were effectively enemy agents in a state of war, Mao's teams set off thousands of bombs in neighbouring Hong Kong and Suharto's way of dealing with the "problem" in Indonesia was to slaughter over half a million people with suspected ties to the PKI; let's not even talk about Latin America and things like Condor. I think exile is a comparatively much more acceptable way to deal with such opposition than systematic murder, and this is a credit to LKY's management of such crises.
Where Singapore shines, in an almost unique way globally (Switzerland might fit to an extent) is in the degree to which it does not impede the freedom to trade. I think the most important part of that today is the freedom of movement and doing business with foreigners, via the visa policy and lack of minimum wage. Friedman thought minimum wage would increase unemployment, but its real effect in the United States was to push around 11 million workers into illegality (80% of unskilled workers), and thus severe curtailment of their rights (when you are scared of La Migra, you do not go to the police). Singapore considers foreign citizen as guests, with rights granted on an increasing basis depending on salary. It's a visionary policy which is rarely commented upon because immigration is a loaded subject, because the real topic of immigration is one of cultural and racial replacement as immigrants settle down and change the makeup of your population (imagine if say, Sweden opened its door to a million new immigrants a year today). It takes enormous courage to formulate policies that effectively allow for large changes in the cultural makeup of your electorate and I can't think of any other country that does it to the same extent (perhaps Australia, where about a quarter of the population is first or second gen foreign if I recall well; and of course the United States right up to the mid-20th century). So most countries restrict the right of citizen to trade labour with foreign citizen, and freedom of movement across their borders. Singapore doesn't, or not much.
Then you look at restrictions on consumption. Guns are not banned, they are merely very expensive to own - a permit for a non NS-man involves a $3k/year membership to a gun club. In the United States, real estate is plenty and the police cannot expect to be the first line of defence everywhere, so, particularly in states like Alaska (where a bear might be waiting on your driveway) and the rural states (to the bewilderment of city dwellers in California) guns become an important right to citizen. In Singapore, which is almost 100% high density housing and has an exceptionally efficient police force, this is not an issue. Cars are also expensive to own, to curtail the damage to the commons (roads, and air quality) that comes with high car ownership. A quick trip to Hong Kong (or, for that matter, London) and you rapidly understand why this was implemented.
A last, and very important point if we're comparing to the United States is the government's approach to business competition. Temasek and GIC are big investors in Singtel, yet they allowed and encouraged many competitors to develop; I am most familiar with the team from MyRepublic whose growth has been spectacular and whose founding was determined by the extremely low CAC for telecom in the country. In France, Xavier Niel fought tooth and nail to have the permission to run a telephone network against the existing oligopoly which had many powerful friends in government. In the UK, Virgin was the first company to successfully fight the BA-led legacy airline oligopoly; BA went as far as offering free flights "as a national service" to MPs and it was only Virgin's diversification which gave it the reserves and time to beat BA's long price war. In the United States, in contrast, lobbying is a huge ticket on most companies' P&L, and anti-competitive legislation being introduced is almost a standard and accepted way of doing business (e.g. Rick Santorum trying to stop the National Weather Service from making its data public, on behalf of the people who funded his campaign - a textbook anticompetitive move which should be highly illegal and is definitely anti-constitutional).
There are a few laws (such as 377A) which (oddly) nobody brought up yet that are a holdover from the British colonial legislature and haven't been voted out yet, for cultural reasons. I think it's a matter of time, as the nation evolves these things will too.
So, under that framework, where is Singapore's rights infringement? Which of my arguments do you disagree with?