Gangsters legitimizing their money, and a society willing to whore itself out to profit off of it, tarnishes any overall definition of "successful" you can appl

Gangsters legitimizing their money, and a society willing to whore itself out to profit off of it, tarnishes any overall definition of "successful" you can apply to Singapore. They're much like Saudi Arabia, which is also very successful financially, with a fairly high quality of life. In both cases, the injustices and degradation of liberty is more important to my view of what a successful society looks like. They're an ethical Potemkin village, keeping the "dirty"things from which they profit a few degrees of separation from their ostensibly clean financial dynamo. Singapore, on the surface of things, almost has things right. The problems arise when you look past to the superficial goods into the overall social functioning - there's some really dark evil with deep ties to Singapore. Also, to make things clear, the US has its fair share of problems like this. Notably, the war on drugs and the cartels enabled by our failed policies are an absolute travesty. The advantage of liberalizing speech is the ability of a society to continually evolve toward the improvement of human wellbeing. When societies suppress speech, that's a telltale signal that those in power are engaged in shady business they don't want the peasants to squawk about. All that said, Singapore is a remarkably civilized and pleasant place to visit - I just wouldn't want to live there. If it gets held to account through revolution or civil breakdown, its failure mode will be spectacular.