The government has succeeded to a certain extent up to 1970s. When LKY decided to push for high wage costs after being assured of a few good years of growth he actually made a major mistake.
From that point, beside burdening the economy with high costs, he was over-pricing too many government services and economic sectors making businesses uncompetitive.
He has continued to price out many so-regarded undesirable industries in order to up the value chain, but he failed because he actually kept out many entrepreneurs badly needed and more needed than scholars and academicians to sustain growths.
He could have upgraded the meritocratic pro-elite education system to broad-based system to nurture new generation of knowlege workers to support new technological growths. He could have made them adaptive changes instead of conceptually pushing out certain industries and entrepreneurial talents.
However being conceptual and without widely exposed practical hands-on experieces he tended to used big brush to paint delicate pictures and surely enough messed it all up. It is a bit like the same remote assumptions made on Souzhou. Assumptions went terribly wrong because of neglected middle technological excellene and broad-based education which were terribly underestimated.
He has failed to up the value chain because essentially he had neglected building the middle management excellence to support the talk-only ministers and largely academic senior civil servants. That is why gorwth traingle concepts could not take off. That is why many micro-chip and other hubs could not take off. One critical factor missing in the equation, up value chain could not take off. There was not the same technology push as seen happening in Taiwan or Korea throughout 1980s and 1990s but every day the media happily painted rosy pictures until the worse recessions hit the red dot in the late 1990s from which property and all sectors slumped 30% and large chunks of people's savings were wiped out.
Singapore's per capita ranking drastically dropped from 8th to 22nd but the state-controlled media happily reported rosy pictures daily to hide the truth.
Without cultivating middle management excellence, through practical knowledge application and innovations as culture in the work place, no amount of technocratic juggling could build up enough knowledge workers to build the new technology start-ups which took Taiwan and Korea big efforts to do so.
He only went by concepts that he should price out too many of the old industries which suitably upgraded could have thrived and led new growths.
He priced out viability and vibrancy which are essentially generated by passionate middle management knowledge workers not high flyers who are only good for administration. Technlogical start-ups and practical business brains are drifting to other countries. Singapore needed large number of practical knowledge workers who are the potential businessmen to lead the actual businesses and create jobs.
Many entrepreneurs shifted operations overseas and emigrated to viable lower cost countries. There were not enough entrepreneurs to lead growths but these people are the real talents and wanted to transform businesses into value-adding technology hubs which take more than a few Dr. Goh Keng Swee to build.
Distracted by his pro-scholar policy, entrepreneurs and practical knowledge applications were largely neglected. By the late 1990s, when the lack of entrepreneurs was found by the remaking singapore committee to be the main cause of Singapore's lack of economic success, it was already too late.
To correct this problem, many entrepreneurial types of public officers who have a yearn for efficiency and empire building will have ot be found not all the scholars and ministers who only manage by slogans and concepts and sing to the same old tune about meritocracy and leadership ego that no longer appealed to the people.
*For a model of accountable corporate governance: read:
http://www.ospforohsopolite.blogspot.comhttp://www.managefranchise.blogspot.com