> My kid can run/play freely and I only worry about her running into traffic.

To be fair, that is possible in a lot of countries, I would have doubts to do that in America though. And not only because of crime.

> I actually began to question whether democracy was the absolute way.

There are several democratic countries that beat Singapore in regards to safety. So I believe this to be flawed reasoning. It is a safe country, but not exceptionally so.

edit: Disregarding the fact that Singapore is officially a democracy. A benevolent dictatorship would probably look more like the Gadaffi regime. Economic success in such a dictatorship is probably mandatory.