No country was ever better off in the long run with a strong knuckle. Study your history. Countries with strong knuckles like Nazi Germany, Mussolini Italy, staim russia, etc, do not end well. In modern times, countries with strong knuckle leaders such as Suharto in Indonesia, Mao in China, MArcos in Phillippines, etc have all turned their countries into shit holes. Countries that everyone wants to migrate to, and want to live in, such as UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, etc. have not had a strong knuckle in their history for several hundred years.
And Old Fart did not make Singapore great. If Old Fart was so great, what would have happened if he had been parachuted in to run lets say a Uganda, or a Malaysia, or a Phillippines, or a India? Those countries would by and large still be shit holes. He was lucky he had a hard working and honest citizenship, a well educated people (thanks to the Brit education system), and fantastic ports, dockyards, and infrastructure left by the Brits. The Brits literally left singapore with billions of dollars worth of infrastructure that we did not have to pay for. We are the ones that made singapore great. Our parents made singapore great. All he did was not try to steal everything in the beginning, and listened to Albert Winsemius.
