It's not obvious that the freedom to criticize the government in public is more important than being able to walk anywhere, anytime, day or night, without fear of being robbed. You have the former freedom in San Francisco, but not the latter; in Singapore, it's the reverse. It would be nice, of course, to have both, but when governance is of consistently high quality, the right to criticize the government isn't as important by definition. I can't think of any time it's not important not to be mugged.

As far as caning and hanging go, I'm pretty sure they do their best only to do those things to convicted criminals. Keep your nose clean and you'll be fine.

For what it's worth, I still think SF is a better place to be an entrepreneur than Singapore. Among other things, Singaporeans are loath to take risks on small unproven startups, whereas SF/SV is startup Mecca. The 'ease of doing business' metric suggested by the article isn't the same as 'best place to be an entrepreneur'.