Singapore's greatest advantage is how small we are. That means we can pivot very quickly, adjust to new situations, and push things out far quicker than a much larger country. However, our political offices are now filled with Chinese eunuchs (and a few of the other races) that do not have the will or even genetic ability to put their foot down, and push for what the population needs. Most Singaporeans know that the haze is not the government's fault, but are angry over the lack of response and inaction. What is the point of serving two years and fighting with the other Sg crabs in the metaphorical bucket if we can literally get smoked to death by our neighbours in a couple of months? Inaction is the way of the Singaporean political elite. As long as the KPI is hit on paper, nvm, we move on, close two eyes and then secretly buy property near the new MRT stations. Actual stone-cold retards. The price is then paid with the suffering of your own local populace. The longer the reaction to the haze is postponed and inept, the more foreign capital we lose. We are a whore of a nation. We must keep our regulars (China/Western money laundering) coming back! The weather is already so hot, now haze, endless construction - what would keep an expat with money to contribute from then just moving to another location? Money moves to where it is best treated. We used to be the premium KTV girl. Now we are becoming an aged, wrinkly courtesan with the clap and distended, geriatric nipples like an old dairy cow (nationally speaking). On multiple levels, the haze has exposed the ineptitude in our ruling class. The seeds for WP winning and socialism in our nation may be set with every day that the island breathes in this smog. It is what it is.

Great read on Singapore, will add a few more points as someone that left after NS and has been away for nearly a decade now: - Genius does not grow in an environment hellbent on confucian conformity - Despite the fiat resources that would allow us to dominate most mainstream art forms and the talent to actually do so, the cultural fear of stepping out of norms means it will never happen - It's genetic + societal. The hot weather, rat utopia type megacity cannot inspire creativity as a whole. You are far too busy trying to make your iron rice bowl to paint, write poetry, or spend hours on an instrument for the 0-100 non-linear achievement that blows humanity away. We are heavily fixated on the accrual of material comforts, due to the size of the country and lack of resources. In scarcity, the mind cannot flourish, and the brain cannot bloom. But it is also cultural. With no examples of locals that broke the trend, and were rewarded, our genetic (Sinoid) predisposition to conformity, and being cautious, will only continue to grow over time. We will import genius through the dying corpses of Europe, and supply the manpower through the Mainland. It is often the most obtuse, facetious Singaporeans that tend to do well in our cutthroat society, smiling with one half of the face while concealing a knife of deceit in the other - a sad evolution of British stiff upper lip and Chinese face mentality joining into the classic phrase, "Sinkie pwn sinkie". And it is this obsession with money, with status, that will likely doom our nation to vanish into obscurity, another banking haven turned into an ocean-covered ruin centuries from now, for the majority of our populace does not care for humanity, rather, we worship the god of hoeflation itself - filthy fiat, a dollar sign with no real backing, trusting in our CPFs, our BTOs, our ECs, our freehold properties to be the Iron Rice Bowl for our families and futures, despite our English education, our great academic skills, and unique bridge between East and the West where we could synthesize the best of both worlds, and become something extraordinary. Our dating culture does not foster much innovation, when the majority of women will only date above their fiat leagues and social status, choosing to value their fellow countrymen solely for the monthly cheque they bring in. This creates a facsimile of dating pressures that ensure only the most conforming tend to reproduce (while birth rates drop), though hopefully, religiousity will reverse some of this trend. Men create great things for the women in their lives, for their children, for their village, for their people - but from young, Singaporeans are taught to hate each other. From zip code to Gifted Programme slots in primary school, there is no avoiding the concept of scarcity when you must fight in the books with other 12 year olds for your PSLE examinations - where your entire life's fate is determined if you understand the purpose of mitochondria in a cell, if you can solve this one algebraic equation or tell me how many oranges Faizal has after a harvest season. The issue is also climate. In the hot, humid equator, one does not know the passing of time and seasons, and how Nature works with God to form and create Life, and how the seed of Man can flow from the Air that one breathes, to the Water that falls from the sky, to the green shoots of life that spring forth as the seasons turn. In the humid, swamplike heat, you have one burning desire - escape into your air-conditioned safety, and shut the door to make sure no one else gets in. Otherwise, the room might just get too warm, and calling up the contractor to fix it is yet another bill that you want to avoid. Singaporeans are thus trapped in an anti-hyperboreal time capsule of scarcity, heat, and humidity, where the brain cannot function optimally, where the lights in the school burn a blue LED scar down optic nerves, where the concept of rest, of recovery, of a life outside academic, career or financial pursuits might exist. I have long proselytized how Jacob Collier born in Singapore would have flung himself off a HDB by 12, and I'm not exaggerating. The Singaporean blood HAS the seeds of genius, but the land that it is sown upon chews it up and spits it out, husks of man fed to the mill of monetary growth. It is the unique combination of British colonial history, the Chinese Confucian system of thought, and the selection bias of labourers and migrants who left mainly for economic pressures, that creates the last bastion of Britain's once great empire. Lee Kuan Yew has been praised for many things, but his biggest regret was the upsetting of dating dynamics that he had created with his Stop at Two policies, and pushing the education of the entire populace as opposed to enshrining family and children as the cornerstones of Singaporean society. A non-Singaporean man can't understand the idiocy of finding a good mate in Singapore as a local male - while possible, it can sometimes feel like looking for a Dodo in 21st century New Zealand, one might as well murder a flightless parrot instead. You are cucked of two years of your youth by National Service, only to be thrown back into academia where your female counterparts have 2 years of education/earning power over you, and you have the best of the rest of the world entering the country in order to take advantage of low taxes, and good business laws, thus sweeping up a significant chunk of the dating population before you've even made your first paycheck. Born in the 21st century, you then look at your parents that are sitting on 7 figures of unrealized gains with their HDB, their condos, their landeds, and have the face of an entitled boomer go: "You can pull yourself up by your bootstraps, I did it in the 70s". You step into your local hawker centre, and no longer is it the smell of satay, the smell of bak kut teh brewing, the wok hei of char kuay teow, no, instead it is the flaming sichuan peppercorns of mainland Chinese stores, Xinjiang skewers, the pungency of kimchi, and you watch the very soul of your childhood disappear to the inflation of fiat, sacrificed for the boomer's supermajority vote and continued growth of assets. You meet a nice girl, go home to her parents - they ask you how much you make as a 20 something, they ask you the potential of your career, they ask how will you provide - the Singaporean man is the proverbial golem in the matrix, a Neo without having ever taken the pill, drained of his jing, his energy, his youth, his time, to fuel the growth of a corporation that ultimately he will never enjoy the benefits of, while the nation bends over to higher powers and economies like a KTV harlot, or an escort in Grand Copthorne Hotel on the cock carousel for a stack of dollars. You walk down the streets of your childhood - the local stores are gone, replaced by the globohomogenization, another chain from the USA, another chain from China, another piece of history priced out by the strength of our dollar, and the ever-growing rice bowl of our ministers and politicians. The middle class feasts and fomos into yet another condo development, chasing the fiat pump of their assets, banking on the next generation in line to be the exit liquidity for their purchases, so they can take fancy holidays to Japan, to Taiwan, to take photos of autumn leaves, cherry blossoms, shoving another piece of chutoro down their gullets. There is no greater pride in Singapore than using your own countrymen for exit liquidity. The kampung spirit is long gone. The Emerald of Katong isn't the laksa, it's the 500k profit you can lock in on your unit after inhabiting it for 3 years in a sexless unhappy marriage where your only action is when you tell your wife you finally booked the tickets to Hokkaido and it's with SIA this time, not ANA. Under Lawrence Wong, the nation will suffer. The man has no stake in Singapore's future, only feasting upon the nipple of our Merlion with his lack of children, his SK-II slathered wife, and his cheap, sloppy blues licks on his American-made Fender guitar that he strums in a nice landed property. Meanwhile, the working-class Singaporean teenager is hooked on Kpods in a cramped HDB, praying for a way out of his misery as he stares at an enlistment letter from the SAF. Thus, the classes in Singapore are actually determined by age of birth, and place on the fiat ladder, as opposed to the creation of value, the traits of intelligence and positive impact, cast aside for the almighty Eye of Horus. A man cannot lead a nation without a bloodstake for its continued success. Lawrence marks the start of a clown world for Singapore, where faking riffs and smiles for the laughter of the crowd is key, and brushing away the rot underneath the surface is the go-to strategy to keep your place on the totem pole, to keep the machine spinning long enough as you harvest yet another omokase meal or another quiet trip in luxury from our pot of avarice. Singapore's inevitable decline has already started, for we lack what the Europeans and Americans had to save their nations at crucial moments - geniuses that could innovate and solve the issues that the population faced, buying them more time to figure out the next step, to keep the ball rolling. With a lowered birthrate, we have begun the negative flywheel of immigration to boost GDP, the continued devaluation of the average salary while the inflation of asset prices and women destroy the psychological prospects of any man in the nation to push forward. Underneath the polished floors of MRT platforms, hidden behind the manicured sidewalks and flower pots adorning the roads, is a spiritually bankrupt nation, one that lost its humanity long ago and chose to trade it for modernity. I pray one day our nation finds its way.