Lee sweated the small stuff too. Members of the educated elite were encouraged to marry one another so as to improve the gene pool. Citizens were told to flush public toilets. Most kinds of chewing gum were banned to prevent its littering. Spitters were heavily fined, while, for some offenses, the authorities inflicted caning as a punishment. That some of Lee’s social strictures drew mockery or censure abroad mattered little to him. The de facto covenant was this: Singapore’s officials would run the city-state effectively and cleanly—making it an oasis in Southeast Asia—and, in return, its people would toe the line. “If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one,” Lee unapologetically wrote in his memoirs.