There are probably better examples to be found.
The "competence" comes at a price - extremely high levels of inequality, utter lack of civil liberties, a one-party authoritarian regime and so forth.
A system in which there are no or few effective feedback mechanisms are bound to diverge over time.
People praising their ‘competence’ seem to ignore it. And the people complaining seem to ignore it. We’re beset on both sides of our political divide by fiscal apathy.
If places like Carmel fail, I’m certain their failure will have much more to do with bad debt than homelessness.