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Geographer Jessie Poon comments on government control in Singapore.

Now, to give you a couple of examples of how the government intervenes in the society from economic to social…if you were to visit Singapore, the first thing that strikes you is that most people live in tall hi-rise buildings which they call public housing. Now, public housing in Singapore has a very positive connotation. Not like here where only the lower income people live in public housing. There, I can only afford to live in public housing because it is so expensive. Now, if 90% of the population is living in this public housing, [the government] is supplying these apartments.

In fact, what the government does is, a person who works contributes 20% to 25% [of their salary], at one point, until the Asian crisis, [then] these numbers changed a little. But at one point they were contributing 20% to 25%, the employer helps out with another 20 to 25%. That goes into this fund that is managed by the government called the Central Provident Fund. And from that fund, that money is used to finance the purchase of the apartment. So the apartment is built by the government, that fund is set up by the government. So in a way, your mortgage is paid through the government as well.

And then, in social terms, if you look at the public transportation, the mass public transit that was built, the government was very instrumental in making the decision to have the lines built; they're still building more lines right now. In terms of the national airlines, the government is a big shareholder in the national airlines which runs very well and profitably.

[I]f you were to own a car in Singapore, it's very very expensive. You need to buy a certificate of entitlement, called a COE, which is auctioned through the market to entitle you to buy a car. That COE could cost a lot. It could be as high as ten thousand US, twenty thousand US and sometimes more depending on the market rate. Once you buy the certificate…that gives you sort of the right to buy a car which costs another 30 to 50 thousand dollars. So the cheapest car you can buy in Singapore at one point, at the peak of its prosperity, was really 40 to 50 thousand dollars. It's really expensive and part of the reason is that the government is very concerned about traffic congestion. So they want to make sure that most people, if they could, do not use cars on the roads....

Now, there are other ways of controlling this congestion and they've introduced a fairly interesting scheme, which is the electronic pricing system. Now, in Paris, this was under discussion and I don't think a lot of my students liked this idea very much either, which is you insert a card in your car that allows some satellite to track where you are so that when you pass through a sudden stretch of the road that requires toll, they can bill you for the toll. Now…when you go through certain sections of the road, there is a camera that monitors the traffic flow and if you forget for some reason to insert your card that deducts the toll money, you are captured on the tape. Not a lot of people would be happy to have their cars caught on tape, for example.

At one point they were very upset that Singaporeans were chewing gum, for example, and so gum was basically banned. Although, to be fair, some of their things like "You're not allowed to litter" and things like that, you'll find that here in the US as well. But it's just that [government control] extends in much more, I suppose, in social fields than it does here.