[Applejinx]

We've had plenty of examples of all those things, over and over, throughout history. Nothing's really new. Societies that get into faceboot territory run afoul of what's already known (there's apparently a CIA handbook to this effect that's being largely ignored in modern America): assert hard rather than soft power and you generate determined and desperate resistance more than you undermine it. That's being demonstrated in countless places right now.

I'm arguing that the egalatarian 'lift my lamp beside the golden door' society is a cheat code for producing the variety and ferment that makes everybody frustrated and unhappy but producing with wild abandon. As a society this tactic dominates the hell out of would-be ethnostates and dictatorships, which seems to also be a natural tendency of humans. They are interested in not being challenged, in those like them not being challenged. Comfortable for those fortunate individuals, hopelessly suboptimal for the society they're in.

The rallying cry of 'NO New York Cities! Only sundown towns where if you don't look right you are killed and nobody ever knows about it!' might please some people (who have never been anywhere near those evil cities) but it just goes to show that many people have unhealthy wishes that are bad for them and the societies they're in.