One of those is a city state, and two of them have a population comparable to Sydney, one comparable to New York.

In other conversations it’s widely argued that those four probably don’t map very well to the larger, more diverse in every way, Western Democracies.

That leaves Germany, which has its problems.

If Germany hadn’t shut down their nuclear power plants they could have had 94% low emissions electricity by now, rather than 64% and much more costly.

The German economy is so well managed they’ve introduced rent-control in some cities.

Absolute paragon of a Western Democracy!

Ah yes, not a real scotsman

Haha, yeah true. I did have a self critical thought along those lines.

Maybe there’s an argument to be made that large countries should be broken up in to smaller, more manageable geographic / population sizes.

Trust busting style.

Just seeing your reply now and wanted to say that I really appreciate your humorous self-reflection. Too often we just argue aggressively against the others standpoint without any self-reflection of our own (I've certainly been guilty of it).

Also the idea of smaller units for creating a closer feeling of belonging is something I've been thinking about quite a few times. I think countries/nations etc. try to use patriotism and a us vs them (because there is often not enough real connection otherwise) mentality to artificially create this.

Your reply did not go unnoticed, thank you.