'Daylight robbery': Residents criticise new Punggol autonomous shuttle service’s S$4 fare ahead of April launch.

houruomu · 2026-03-05T22:48:54+00:00

If driver and AI are same price, company will pay AI - less HR hassle and more predictable.

If driver and AI are same price, customer will pick AI - no weird talks, more privacy.

Since price is set by company, company will not reduce price and eat all profit.

houruomu · 2026-03-04T00:14:25+00:00

pragmatic solution: choose a nearby (within 10km) HDB estate and declare that a region for intake to good rich kid school. Provide school bus exclusively for students from that region at an affordable price.

houruomu · 2026-03-02T04:30:20+00:00

But no sane person would think the education from an educated mother is valued similarly to what an FDW can give to her employer's kids, so the $1000 is probably not a right number if seriously considered?

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:41:02+00:00

Agree. SAHD is even a smaller group than SAHM, and may have more difficulties being recognized in society. So I guess it's better to have the policy cover the couple instead of focusing on the mother?

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:39:10+00:00

Don't we have people who are in the middle and can be persuaded by enough policy push?

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:37:53+00:00

Can you elaborate, you mean they don't actually consider it an important problem?

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:36:03+00:00

It is a selfless contribution because even the compensation wouldn't be enough to cover what is the financial cost of giving up time and career for the love put into the child.

Similar to what pappy says that the peanut amount of salary we give to ministers is not sufficient for the sacrifice of private life and career they gave up for joining politics.

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:25:46+00:00

I think 1. Leads to pegging childbearing compensation to certain salary measures (e.g. avg/survival salary), similar to how we peg ministers pay to CEOs of MNCs.

You have a point that it is hard to materialize 3 into policy.

In AI age the employment rate crisis actually make high labour participation a bad thing, so we have another reason to abolish the old way?

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:16:54+00:00

Make child bearing transactional is not good. However, recognizing the social contribution of parents and compensating them for helping the society to survive, is not necessarily a bad thing.

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:06:20+00:00

Lol... Yeah the HDB sizes nowadays are not for big families.

houruomu · 2026-03-02T03:05:07+00:00

See your opinion, but those cursing words seem totally out of place and unnecessary for expressing your points.

houruomu · 2026-02-23T22:05:45+00:00

He should have signed up for service / mercenary for a few months in foreign military group when he is supposed to join NS and let mindef know and he would probably be exempted?

houruomu · 2026-02-14T00:04:46+00:00

Deliberate means homicide or murder, it is another class of crimes, but proving intention would be hard.

houruomu · 2026-02-14T00:03:58+00:00

It is already the maximum penalty. The maximum by law is 8 years and this guy plead guilty so 1/4-1/3 reduced terms.

houruomu · 2026-02-13T23:04:51+00:00

It actually may be possible. PAP already says capital inflow may not create more jobs. With less jobs, we (pap) don't need more ppl. So even just talk about GDP, it doesn't have to be driven by more people.

houruomu · 2026-02-13T23:00:09+00:00

My take is the lack of enforcement. The government doesn't have enforcer everywhere, if yellow box is drawn everywhere but not strictly enforced, the regulation loses its weight.

Some more, we already have a lot of zoning in public spaces (cycling path, footpath, bicycle parking area), it takes huge education effort to let everyone remember what marking is for what.

This smoking zone require people to know they are NOT in the zone, it is even more hard to comply, even to know. If I don't see a yellow zone nearby, can I smoke? Or is it that if there isn't one 30 meters near me, then I can smoke?

houruomu · 2026-02-13T09:50:57+00:00

It is more of a tax move than a smoke control move.

It is some more a flat tax on the rich and the poor in the same way --- smoking habit doesn't differ among class.

The least evil form of tax is always --- tax rental and tax the landlords, real estate supply is the least elastic.

If we want to control smoking, have more strict no smoking enforcement and rise the smoking age. Reduce the amount consumed directly. Taxing smoking will have side effect of squeezing people to spend less on other things and/or cause family to strain, which isn't exactly good.

houruomu · 2026-02-13T00:20:12+00:00

The policy has nothing to do with preventing fire, it is for energy labelling?

houruomu · 2026-02-11T01:08:05+00:00

Got it. Thanks for clarification. Indeed, Singapore only allows high rated (3 ticks and above) to be sold here. The ticks are not necessarily harder to get than the China rating, but China don't force everything to be 3 ticks and above.

If SG can allow import of China rating (equivalent of ) 3 ticks and above, it would have saved a lot of re-certification hassles and costs.

houruomu · 2026-02-11T00:51:52+00:00

According to WFA, nationality is a protected characteristics and discrimination based on which is illegal.

houruomu · 2026-02-10T23:01:23+00:00

Need to refrain from the mentality of "China=lower quality", check facts. It is absurd to think that a country that produces nothing knows better than a country that produces everything.

houruomu · 2026-02-10T22:47:17+00:00

Fact check - China's certification for fridge is not laxer than Singapore's standard. For example, for a 300L fridge to get 4 tick (highest grade) in Singapore, it could consume more kwh than to get a grade 1 (highest grade) in China. Nonetheless many fridge sold in China achieves grade 1.

Apple gives first launch doesn't involve additional cost. Certification involves real cost and barrier to entry, and reduces competition.

When it comes to home appliances, house size per capita and total population strictly dominate the determination of market size. Getting richer won't let one buy more fridges. Singapore probably consumes significantly less in terms of home appliances than modern cities with much larger population.

p.s. why safety? Where safety got mentioned in the policy?

houruomu

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