Now Las Vegas comes to you.

This is probably an hoary old chestnut by now, but I'll still say it anyway: -The taxi drove past the city on the Keppel Viaduct and Benjamin Sheares Bridge this morning, at about 6. The sky was still dark, but the Marina Bay area was brilliantly lit, making plainly visible to all the forest of cranes that's building the Integrated Resorts with casinos. The IRs are partly up already. They're starting to show a bit of a resemblance to the fine architecture along the Strip.
You bastards, you took the easy way out.
You could have tried to foster an entrepreneurial spirit. Or bet on the next major creative industry. Something, perhaps, a little more generative than gambling?
Of course it wouldn't have been easy. It would have taken a massive effort, massive funding, and there would be no guarantee of success. What if the whole thing failed? Singapore might just become an economic backwater eclipsed by all the giants rising around it. If that's not going to happen anyway, with or without gambling dens added.
Las Vegas is a surreal place. It feels removed from the real world, a giant amusement park for adults rather than a city where human beings live in. Now it seems that Marina Bay is going to become a mini Las Vegas.
Yes, surely Vegas does fulfil a function, not a very savoury function, perhaps, but still a necessary, even intriguing, one. But is it necessary to replicate it in miniature all over the world, including here in the Most Serene republic? There's already another, bigger replica relatively nearby. It's called Macau.
We don't need to turn all our homes into mere amusement parks, do we.