Of course I've already read up on Singapore. It's a paternalistic, de-facto one party state, on a model common in East Asia. They make a different set of tradeoffs to Western nations - harsh law enforcement to achieve low crime rates, etc. I've lived in China, which does have a shitty government, but even China's problems are exaggerated in Western media.

The only things on that list I have a real problem with are freedom of speech and LGBT rights. Capital punishment and caning shock Westerners, but Singapore's legal system is actually fair and efficient; it's not like the procedural trainwreck which is the US justice system where countless criminals walk free and countless law-abiding citizens are rotting in jail.

Conscription is pretty much necessary for a micro-state sandwiched between two nations which historically hated their guts. Migrant workers aren't forced to be there (and unlike Qatar or Dubai, they're not generally lured in under false pretences). Even the freedom of expression rules are very similar to the de-facto/de-jure hate speech rules which exist in the West, and they exist for a similar reason - Singapore wants to minimise Chinese/Malay tensions.

EDIT: I just remembered that this HN user - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=frenchieinsg - initially piqued my interest in Singapore. Might be of interest to others of similar mind.