Replies

I suspect that the idea behind this is Singapore. For many years they had a “focused authoritarian” leader whose goal was to make Singapore wealthy and pro-business.

He did this, more than in any other way, by oppressing societies’ pests, the annoying people who interfere with others, continually whine and complain and demand change, contribute little or nothing, try to parasite off of others, and who are rude, crude, drunken or drugged, gross and offensive. Corruption is a serious crime at any level.

For some reason this made him incredibly popular with most people. If not with societies’ pests.

During the early years, Singapore had many slums for the working poor, but eventually they became intolerable, so he built much better housing for the poor, but on condition that they upgrade their behavior as well, and stop acting poor. Upward mobility is strongly encouraged, and there are not a whole lot of poor people left in Singapore.

There are many common gross behaviors that are crimes in Singapore, such as public spitting, urinating in elevators and such, that are not punished with jail time, but with fines for most everything. And if you can’t pay those fines, then you work for the city doing manual labor until they are paid.

For even more annoying offenses, as one American teenager learned to his detriment, there is caning.

For first offense illegal drug use an offender is put in a military style boot camp, and they mean it. Second offense, and first offense for dealers, is the death penalty. Though they seldom need to use it. They are very clear about this.

So, could this work in Honduras?

The answer is probably, “Nothing succeeds like success”.

If they create these enclaves, and they are a huge success, a lot of people will learn by their example. Conservatives will respect their process as being the way to achieve their ends; leftists will want all the good stuff without working for it.

Which is why leftists are so often among societies’ pests.