Absolute position are dangerous things without complete knowledge. I mostly agree with your position, and was hoping you had something useful to say about Singapore.
Without it I think that the absolute position is naïve.
What should be added about LKY? He did many wonderful things for his country, but he was also a dictator. As a dictator, he was evil. He wasn't the worst kind of evil, but that was bad. I really can't imagine how intelligent people can still discuss about it.
Being a dictator means forcing your decision to people with different ideas. That's violence. How can it be good? You may say that, in a case like Singapore, the man did more good than evil, but that isn't the point. The dictatorship part was wrong.
By the way, if you need to force your ideas to most of your people, it means that you are not doing a good job as a governor. If you force your ideas to just a minority, than you are being evil just for the sake of being evil.
