Muzzled or misdirected?

Among today's news reads I found a Salon article rounding up the Olympics, "What I couldn't write in China". Among its conclusions:

... it [China] has also figured out the most modern means of efficient repression. Better than muzzling those with dangerous thoughts is creating a populace so focused on personal goals and consumerism that they have nothing to say in the first place.

I think that observation could as easily apply to Singapore.