I don't think this article is about how perfect Singapore is, if you try hard enough I am sure you will find ridiculous rules, laws and human rights violations any country has.

You are right, however Singapore is a special case. It has grown from third-word status to extraordinary economic impact in just 50 years, a trajectory not seen by nearly any other society in history, but its growth has been very unbalanced. It's primary growing pain has been a disconnect between its economic success and old-world policies that are no better than many other still-developing countries and failed to grow alongside its economy. It caught up quickly to the rest of the developed world in economic ways, but still lags deeply far behind in many other ways.

This is a very culturally biased statement. Our current western culture is very 'progressive' (in the ideological sense), and we generally view such an approach as a sign of 'lagging behind'. If you ask a Singaporean, though, their priors are likely to be different and they may disagree - and probably not because they have failed to comprehend or 'catch up with' our western mindset and its underpinnings. I don't generally consider myself a relativist, but I find this sort of approach to these issues to be overly simplistic.

In rereading my comment, you are right that my wording is a bit unfair. But my general feeling is that human civilization generally does make progress in ways beyond the economic, and most societies grow in a balance way across the spectrum, while Singapore has leapt dramatically in one way while not changing in another, and this has created (in my opinion) some contradictions within its society, not the least of which is lack of free speech. It may seem trivial on the surface that someone can't boldly criticize a government policy, but this has effects that go much deeper than the actual "problem" such a policy tries to address.

> It caught up quickly to the rest of the developed world in economic ways

I think this is the only reason people praise Singapore. It's not how clean or orderly it is, it's how rich it is.

If it was dirt poor and still horse-whipping people for farting or whatever they do, it would have few people arguing in its favour.

It's also a special case in being a Chinese enclave surrounded by much lager Muslim countries: Malaysia and Indonesia. How do you think it compares with those?

To put things into perspective, for all it's cultural conservatism and archaic laws which Singapore's founding father was quite insistent shouldn't be enforced, I'd feel much safer being openly gay in Singapore than most parts of many American states.