This is a fairly big deal for me - not because Michelin awarded a street vendor a star. I don't think this is a stunt, Singapore has sufficient vibrancy in this market that someone was going to be worth a star once they started looking.
No this is a big deal because of the golden future of humankind. Somehow it's possible for all humans to live safe middle class low energy democratic not in a war zone lives. It's a 5% chance maybe.
But it means that to do it we need to raise the lives and lifestyle "bottom" billions. This is the goal of the UN millennium goals and their new follow on work, and it is worthy - and this award, while not really about the poorest of the world, is about how we are spreading the wealth, spreading the capability. A street vendor has the supply chain, the training the market to cook Michelin starred food. This is a tiny tiny hint that we can do it - We can pull everyone up to the golden future
I know there are a million objections to this - but to bastardise William Gibson, the golden future is here, it's just unevenly distributed.