Having completed my first full day in Singapore, I continue to be impressed, as I believe all visitors are, by what a shiny, clean, well-organized place it is. One could say that this is because it’s a wealthy country. I would go in the other direction: It’s wealthy because it’s chosen to be a clean, bright, shiny place.

Yesterday, we went to the Marina Bay complex, a major tourist attraction that has two massive indoor gardens and one of the biggest malls I’ve ever seen. To get there and back, we took the underground trains that are part of the Singapore Mass Rail Transit (SMRT) system.

Image created using AI. This is really funny because ChatGPT said it couldn’t use people in the image lest it stereotype them. I think what it came up with is even worse!

Before this trip, the last two urban underground rail systems I used were in New York and San Francisco. Both had similarities: They were filthy, they stank, and the corridors were lined with homeless people, who were also filthy, and many of whom were actively engaged in extreme abuse, whether injecting themselves or in a completely dazed, disoriented state. The whole experience felt like the gates of Hell. Since my last visit to New York, pushing people onto the tracks or otherwise attacking them has become a “thing.”

In Singapore, it’s different. The subway is immaculate. It even smells nice. There are no homeless drug addicts living underground like the damned. The computer systems for buying tickets and then entering and leaving the underground work seamlessly. The trains themselves are also immaculate, no doubt in large part because it’s illegal to eat or drink anywhere on or in the SMRT system. We were on the train at night, and the passengers were clean, quiet, sane, and sober.

A New Yorker I know commented that the system is much safer because glass barriers keep people waiting for the train from falling onto the tracks. The barriers open only at the point where the train doors open when the train pulls into the station. It is impossible for someone to become disoriented and fall on the tracks. More importantly, from the New Yorker’s point of view, you can’t be pushed onto the tracks either.

The difference in the two systems isn’t merely a matter of money. It’s about choices. In Singapore, they’ve chosen to make SMRT clean and safe. That would be a viable choice even if it were a less fancy system. The rules are absolutely explicit—no eating, no drinking, no fare jumping, no littering, no taking pictures up women’s skirts (apparently, it’s a thing)—and the penalties are harsh. Just as importantly, Singapore enforces those penalties. Because the law takes them seriously, so do the people. And, of course, quite famously, Singapore has a zero-tolerance policy for drugs. That’s a disincentive, too.

You see this everywhere: People in Singapore don’t engage in bad behavior that diminishes society as a whole because the penalties are serious and the government takes them seriously. That’s a societal choice. But in one American city after another, our politicians and bureaucrats have made a different choice: To ignore the laws on the books and let the lowest common denominator behavior become the standard.

America, which was once clean, bright, and shiny, too, doesn’t have to live by leftist decline. We can make different choices.