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what's good about Singapore

Those of you who have read my work (e.g., http://www.gse.uci.edu/markw/singapore.html) know that I'm critical of Singapore's authoritarianism. However, this morning I've been pondering what's good about Singapore, and I'm thinking in particular about communitarian ideology.

Communitarianists believe that individual rights need to be balanced with social responsibilities and that autonomous selves do not exist in isolation (see http://www.cpn.org/cpn/sections/tools/models/communitarianism.html). Of course, to my taste, Singapore takes this balance way too far in the direction of social control, thus obliterating important individual rights. But I am not a libertarian either, and I find myself uncomfortable with much of the individual rights discourse in the US.

Several issues come to mind. The most obvious is gun control. The cult of individual liberty regarding gun purchases is so extreme in the United State that not only can virtually anybody own an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons, but they can do so without even the kind of basic registration of equipment and licensing of owner/operator that automobiles require. (This is related to the broader paranoia in the US about any types of individual identification or registration, resulting in absurd situations such as this: to register your child for school, you have to bring a photocopy of a mailed utility receipt as evidence that you live in the school district!)

A second issue relates to environmental planning. Singapore puts a huge tax on automobiles--something that I'm sure is onerous for Singaporeans to deal with. But, this tax has proven useful in preventing the small city-state from being overrun by cars. I would love to see our tax system in the U.S. shifted from income and property to environmental--for example on carbon or gasoline usage--to encourage the protection of the environment. (Other forms of city planning allow Singapore to have what is believed to be the highest rate of home ownership in the world.)

The main example of communitarianism that's on my mind right now is that of organ donation. The US, like many countries in the world, has an "opt-in" system of organ donation. In order to donate an organ, you have to take an affirmative step of signing a card choosing that option. (This is because of an individual rights perspective that your right to control your body takes precedence over other social goods, even after your death.) There are numerous problems with this system, but the basic one is this. Most people don't want to make a decision on this issue that is going to put them in a small minority, and they know that most others will not bother to sign the cards. Think of it this way: if there are only a small number of other organ donors, and thus a desperate shortage of potential organs, doctors might look at a dying person who has signed such a card not as an individual saved but as a useful resource to be plundered. (Even if that's a small possibility, few people want to take that risk.) On the other hand, if almost everybody were an organ donor, than it would be safe to be one too, because the pool of available organs would be so large that no individual would have to worry about being a special target.

The way that a number of countries--not only Singapore, but also Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain--have dealt with this situation is to adopt a "presumed consent" system. In such a system, everyone is presumed to be an organ donor unless they opt-out, by signing a card to that effect and/or listing themselves in a national data base. Individual rights are thus still protected, but they have to be positively asserted--otherwise the state gets the right to your body. Singapore has an especially sophisticated system, with a letter about this topic mailed to all of the country's citizens when they reach 18 giving them the choice of opting out by signing the card and sending it back in. A national "opt-out" registry is made available to all medical personnel so that they can check to see if a dying patient is on the list. (Note that this registry only works with some other form of identification beyond name. In America, this could be hampered by the fact that the "John Smith" on the registry may be a completely different "John Smith" than the one in your hospital).

Countries that use presumed consent usually have about 2% of their citizens opt out. They thus are able to essentially solve the problem of insufficient availability of organs. If such a system were put in place in the US, it's estimated that some 5000 lives a year would be saved. Nearly twice the number of people who died in the World Trade Center attack could be saved annually. But, the likelihood of such a system being adopted soon is not high, due to American cultural values on these types of issues.

I realize that you don't have to go to Singapore to find a better balance of individual and social responsibilities -- things like presumed consent, gun control, gasoline taxes, and saner systems of national identification are all found in Europe, where individual rights are protected as well. I just thought the subject line would capture people's attention, and Singapore does do some communitarian things right, such as presumed consent. And heck, there are a lot of other great things about Singapore, including its world class educational system, its beautiful sights, its friendly people, its fabulous multi-cultural food, its nighttime safari, its Singlish dialect, and the wonderful collection of orangutans in its zoo!

cheers,
mark

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Last updated: January 31, 2002 in Hot Metal Pro 6.0