That's exactly my point. In high-trust, homogenous societies, you don't necessarily need harsh laws to enforce social norms and "civilised" behaviour. In more heterogenous societies, you have low-trust so you need tough laws to enforce the societal "norms".

Japan is the former and Singapore is the latter. Both end up in good places to live, but one has to have the full discussion about the reasons and causes for each.

Have you lived in Japan? Because this is an almost stereotypical outsider view of the country. Japan has draconian drug laws, up to 10 years for minor possession. People can be held in detention, repeatedly, for weeks without being formally accused. Police is visibly present in public.

All of East Asia is homogeneous. Every country is highly paternalistic and legalistic. North Korea is probably both the most homogeneous and authoritarian country on earth.

In reality heterogeneous societies are significantly less prone to this. You could not turn India or the US into comparable police states because nobody would even agree on how to get there. Singapore gets away with it because it's effectively a small city state. A country of similar composition but 10x larger, which happens to actually exist just North, Malaysia, could never maintain that level of repression.

> You could not turn India or the US into comparable police states because nobody would even agree on how to get there.

They seem to be perfectly fine with it in Kashmir.

Some (many?) would say their drug laws and other harsh punishments are a problem in themselves.

It’s also a tiny country which happens to be a dictatorship where these drug laws are fairly easy to enforce.

Also I’m not convinced that executing people for non-violent crimes is a good tradeoff in the first place.