It's tempting to think we can mimic the example of a small country, but it's unfortunately quite difficult to know if the policies mattered, or if it has to do

It's tempting to think we can mimic the example of a small country, but it's unfortunately quite difficult to know if the policies mattered, or if it has to do with cultural and economic forces that the government doesn't have much influence over. Imagine you take the US, and you just cut it into small "nations" arbitrarily. Despite having the same laws and policies, you'd see a huge amount of diversity when it comes to crime rates, wealth, income distribution, and so on.