Heirarchy of needs: baseline level of "Freedom from" poverty, conflict, instability comes before "freedom to" act liberally. I'd agree that making that transiti

Heirarchy of needs: baseline level of "Freedom from" poverty, conflict, instability comes before "freedom to" act liberally. I'd agree that making that transition in priorities is important, and that a government allow society to liberalize, but if you read his book, he lays out the reasons that he felt Singapore should be slow to socially liberalize (racial conflict being a major one, and deeper differences he sees between Asian and Western values, make of that what you will). IIRC, he also argued that their press is free, just not free to lie or embellish, so they would face consequences for exaggeration or libel. He thought that was necessary to prevent incitement to riot or political subversion.