The article illustrates once more the remarkable achievement of LKY and his team. Singapore has no natural resources and no natural talent as its original inhabitants were Malay fisherman and the migrant stock are of poor quality from Southern China and rubber tappers from Southern India.
The fact that LKY could achieve what he did with so few resources makes him almost a miracle worker of sorts. It would be like a tennis player winning wimbledon today using a wooden racket of the 70s.
there were many successful city-states in history that subsisted and prospered under more difficult conditions than LKY's Singapore. LKY's work is not the best by any means, probably no big deal at all.