Singapore and Japan are two countries where I've seen things work that don't work anywhere else because the citizenry treats the commons so well (whether out of pure civic pride or fear of some consequences I don't have any idea).
New Zealand, all the Nordic countries, many western democracies all provide very good examples of good government without jailing people who speak up against their rulers and without strict censorship laws
Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, even Chile, would say otherwise. It doesn’t require a centuries long history of institutionalized representative government to foster wellbeing.
Try Singapore - what I would consider the model country. It’s what happens when a country decides that filthy cities with piss and feces everywhere, drugs openly being used in public homeless tent cities, and casual shoplifting not only tolerated but actually celebrated by some is not a measure of progress or w/e the hoards think it is.
The governments of larger states like Britain, France, Spain and Germany are not without problems, but we're not casting envious glances at how Serbia and Bulgaria are run, never mind Belarus :)
Outside Europe you've got a group which includes central American states famed for frequent coups and revolutions, nations synonymous with conflict like Libya, Sierra Leone and Israel/Palestine, extremely authoritarian post USSR central Asian states, a rare communist holdout in Laos, the absolute monarchy of the UAE and Togo which might as well be having been ruled by the same family for its entire history.
Singapore isn't a 'hellish dystopia', its positively paradise compared with most of them, despite the obvious limits to its democracy. Costa Rica's last half century is positive too, I guess.
That's much better than the U.S., where they just let polluters functionally disappear absolved of all responsibility after poisoning the town for decades.
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