All these articles tend to miss the fundamental point of city state uniqueness.

With no internal market, city states work almost completely different from other countries and if anything LKYs unconditional acceptance of this truth is underpinning much of the countries success - embracing its role and limitations and pursuing unique solutions suited for this situation.

Singapore started out, beyond a good location for a deep water habor, without natural resources at all - a homeless orphan somehow clawing into a billionaire neighbourhood despite having to pay for water, food, fuel, sand (essential construction materials), energy - paying for imports almost every other nations take for granted.

Surrounded by no exactly friendly countries, its sons have to sacrifice 2 prime years of workforce contribution to national defense, on top of having to spend the equivalent 25% of Germany's defense budget despite only having only 3.5M citizens (compared to 120M)

It's a disadvantage so fundamental and overwhelming that any call to adopt systems - econonic or social - is misguided. It's a place with little right to exist in the global world and only a ruthless, focused government free of ideological blinders would be able to make that work.

For Singapore to have value to the world, having no resources others desire, means being more efficient, more nimble and smarter/harder working than anyone else - its role fundamental connection between others that is so efficient that it beats all other arrangement. Water independence from Malaysia alone is a 100 year project - and has turned Singapore into the key exporter of desalination tech in the world.

And the battle has only become harder- money/offshore finance was the key lifeline and competitive advantage most small countries in the world in the last century... it got pulled like a rug under most of them after 9/11, necessitating much restructuring.

Changi is the world's best airport out of necessity, air sharing and absorbing the value of sea - port location being the only advantage the country was blessed with (and under constant attempts to be replaced by Chinese and Malaysian ports)

Singapore is South East Asia's business hub out of necessity, using safety and rule of law as a key advantage over the surrounding countries to attract regional HQs for jobs, tax revenue and growth.

No, most of these articles miss the point, comparing full fledged countries to city states while making some affordable to size as a supposed advantage, glancing over the extreme disadvantage inherent to it.

With reputation and trust gained of decades but possible to lose in moments, no, lofty talk of how things should be and simplifications and reflexive typecasting around authoritarianism few western press articles really convey the deeply nuanced and complex tradeoffs this country has to make to stay alive and relevant.

No, left / right ideology has no place here, fundamental empirical and scientific understanding of cold hard reality and day to day optimizing for the country's long term actually make this a pretty good place to live, especially in times of covid and LKY has more credit to that than anyone - not just because he was smart but because he never lost sight of the fundamental differences and unique solutions the country needed