1) With a lot of government intervention, as I said.

You should form your own arguments instead of posting some obscure person's blog post.

Nobody ever said Singapore doesn't have any government intervention, so stating this is a strawman. The argument is that Singapore is closer than most countries to this ideal of economic freedom and low taxes. Their tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is 14.2% and they rank #2 on the Index of Economic Freedom.

2) The economy is not the only thing that matters.

Yes, but the discussion-at-hand was the effects of their economic policies. I'm not claiming that Singapore's policies are superior to those of the Nordic countries in every aspect; I'm claiming that their economic policies are clearly superior.

3) Scandinavia in general is doing just fine on the economy front even without low taxes. Clearly there is more to the picture.

Singapore has a higher GDP per capita than any country in Scandinavia, and the GDP per capita in the U.S. and Hong Kong is higher than in every Scandinavian country besides Norway, which is mostly due to Norway's oil revenue.

The cultural homogeneity you are referring to is slanted towards accepting that government intervention is vital

The important part is that most people agree with each other. I'll give you an example of how political polarization is vital.

In the U.S. a good portion of the population supports a single-payer healthcare system, while most of the people belonging to the small government camp support very minimal government intervention in healthcare. As a comprise we've maintained healthcare programs that provide insurance to low-income people and the elderly, yet the most significant effects these programs have had is artificially increasing the cost of healthcare [because hospitals and medical suppliers no longer have an incentive to lower costs for those who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford treatment]. In this case, socialized healthcare would be superior to the system that the U.S. currently uses. However, it's definitely not the best alternative. The problem is that both of these options are out-of-reach because there is too much political polarization among our citizens and representatives.

Nothing you said makes size an impossible barrier to overcome.

It's not an impossible barrier to overcome, but it does make it more difficult to influence government and limit corruption. The reason the U.S. has done so well is because we have, at least to some extent, managed to limit the size and power of the federal government. Limiting the federal government was one of the main objectives of America's founding fathers, and for good reason. Another reason the U.S. has done well is because we've managed to obtain at least some degree of economic freedom and low taxes, although it's worth mentioning that our policies aren't anywhere near ideal.

Right, and fuck all the minorities and women who'd get screwed in the process.

The 'rights of the minorities and women' argument is used as a petty excuse to increase the authority of the federal government. Even the civil war wasn't merely fought over slavery, and those who suggest otherwise have been misled by history books that were written to fit certain ideological ideals. The situation that ignited the Civil War was the denial of state rights to the South. At the time congress was prohibiting the Southern states from importing cotton and other raw materials by requiring them to sell to the industrialized Northern states [and this was only one part of a long list of ways the South was being mistreated by the federal government]. After a while the South got fed up of congress not acknowledging their state rights, so eventually they succeeded and the Civil War began. Abraham Lincoln didn't decide to free the slaves until two years after the war had already started, and the main reason he did it was to punish those states for continuing the war effort.

The fact is that one of the legitimate functions of the federal government is to protect civil rights, so conservatives today have no issue with protecting the rights of women and minorities. However, the federal government should not have the authority to establish government programs and impose laws that should be instituted at the state level.