The Singaporean government's hand in it's own economy is larger than a lot of self-professed communist states - Temasek Holdings, Mediacorp, DBS Bank, Singapore Airlines etc etc.

I never understood why libertarians/free market proponents think that Singapore is the paragon of laissez-faire economics. Try studying the country's housing market policies, for example, and you'll quickly realise that the government is extremely interventionist.

The difference is between Singaporean policymakers/civil servants and their counterparts from elsewhere is that the former are actually world-class in terms of competence, and their interventions are generally very well-designed/well-justified.

While they are interventionist in some way, so is everybody else. The US government involvement in housing is gigantic as well.

We can learn a lot from the policies, both free market and otherwise. And we shouldn't learn from others.

No free market person thinks of Singapore as some prefect example. As that doesn't exist. So you have to take example from different places. And Singapore has more good examples then most.

> The US government involvement in housing is gigantic as well.

Sure, from a financial perspective, particularly around mortgages.

Singapore owns the HDB, which owns the leasing rights to 80%+ of all residential property and almost all land in the country. Issuing 99 year leases to citizens and PRs.

Imagine if the US government owned all land rights, built virtually all apartments and instigated racial quotas to match the demographics of the country; then subsidized the price drastically to make it affordable for the population. That's what Singapore does.

This isn't unique either.

The other libertarian wet-dream Hong Kong has a similar land-leasing policy. The major difference there is that 999 year leases were allowed at one point (rare and no longer issued).

In fact the only freehold property in Hong Kong is St John’s Cathedral.

First of all, I do know the difference between Singapore and the US. But my statement is true anyway. I wasn't drawing a direct equivalence of housing policy.

The person above pointed out that Singpore, is #1 on the "Index of Economic Freedom" and the rank high in other such indexes.

Housing policy in regards to ownership maybe a counterpoint to that, but we are not looking at individual policy but the at everything.

If you want to dispute the claim that Singpore is not 'free market' at all, then please direct me to an index with better methodology in that regard.

> Sure, from a financial perspective, particularly around mortgages.

That to, but that's not primary what I am talking about.

No I'm talking about zoning and many, many, many other types of regulation. Plus of course, tax code and many other things.

Typically new land for a city is rezoned, then a developer comes in, build there and often inherits the infrastructure to the city to maintain. Then the city collects some property tax from that.

That is different then the Singapore model but its also a gigantic intervention in pretty much every aspect of the housing market.

Not to mention the government hold many plots of lands that could be developed. The government owns quite a lot of land.

The direct ownership is only one aspect, what you can do is another.

And as I said, I'm not disputing that in such a ranking, their land and housing policy could be considered as a negative compared to the US.

Singapore is the example of a (relatively) benevolent dictator over decades.

I wouldn't call it a dictatorship -- no label neatly applies to Singapore, but calling it a dictatorship (even if benevolent) is quite incorrect. Describing it as a soft authoritarian country is much more appropriate.

Maybe free in some areas eg. trade and less so in others.