The right answer usually involves sex, drugs and violence.

Dear Singapore,

It has been brought to my attention that while only forty-three years old as an independent country, you are struggling with a low marriage rate and your population is in imminent decline. Several government ministries are scratching their heads and wondering why a country that is so young and rich and successful is not twisting its panties in a knot to screw like bunnies and make more babies for its fledgling nation.

And this might hurt a little bit, but I’m going to be brutally honest with you. And no, it’s not even about the size for once. For all your economic power, your island does absolutely nothing to turn me on. Even with your obvious phallic symbolism in boasting the world's largest man-made fountain and man-made waterfall, your tiny country-state crammed with skyscrapers and other erect physical structures is one libido-crunching black hole of regulations. Being reminded every other corner of the many fines I can receive for the many minor transgressions I may commit does not make me want to have more sex and bear children. It makes me want to walk around with hunched shoulders and constantly glance over my back to make sure that Big Brother isn’t watching me.

No littering? Okay, that’s fine; picking up trash does get a little anal after a while. But no gum chewing? And a death penalty for any possession of drugs? Isn’t that a bit too melodramatic? And no public dancing? First of all, what the fuck does that even mean? And secondly, how the hell can you expect your people to make babies if a mere rhythmic sashay of the hips is going to lead to a nasty run-in with the law?

What I fail to understand is that for all your fetishistic compulsion to make every harmless activity known to man illegal, you make the one activity that is antithetical to the production of happy families legal. That is, prostitution. You demand an outrageous fine for picking flowers off a lawn and spitting on the sidewalk, but you look the other way when your citizens get busy with some random whore off of Geylang Road. And then you act all surprised when your people aren’t getting married and making more little Hui Fangs and Jia Nings. What kind of messed up logic is that, Singapore?

Your censorship policies and one-party rule doesn’t work too well to the libido of your people, either. While beautiful people get by with being beautiful to get some booty, the rest of the average-looking folk use things like intelligence, a highly articulate mind and drug-hook ups to get into other people’s pants. But if there’s no open exchange of opium and opinion, why should there even be an open exchange of body fluids?

Exactly, Singapore. Exactly.

Because honestly, Singapore, when you cultivate a public psychological space that is hyper-paranoid of all things dirty and irregular, you are indirectly nurturing a subconscious fear of sex among your people. Because as much as you want to admit otherwise, sex is a very dirty and irregular business, and judging by the current state of affairs, no amount of government propaganda is going to make your people get busy any time soon.

Maybe you need to take a cue from your less rich but more sex-happy neighbors to instill some artificial danger and excitement into your little country-state. You know, give your citizens a sweet taste of death to kick-start their dormant libidos. For example, I have traveled to unsafe parts of Southeast Asia that have unpaved roads, no stoplights and really shitty drivers. Just the very act of crossing the street was a life-or-death situation. But guess what? It made my heart beat faster! It flushed my cheeks and made me sweat! And being in the midst of a dirty-ass ghetto with a poor infrastructure and constant muggings ignited my evolutionary instinct to go home to my hubby and make some babies!

How about this, Singapore? Loosen that collective necktie and order yourself a bottle of champagne. And ask that foreign fellow from Europe or North American to roll you a joint. How about as a social experiment, for one week you make prostitution illegal and everything else legal? There may be some mild bouts of anarchy. There may be some litter on the streets, and then possibly some meth-soaked bodies. But I assure you, all the bloody mayhem will make your country collectively horny as hell.

Think of the children.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Non-Singaporean