As for being “fully democratic”, where is such a country? The US, the UK, and Australia are involved in losing a war based on lies that the population as a whole never wanted – yet no-one is being held accountable. Being able to vote for a government means little if the government won’t actually respect the wishes of the voters.

Regarding social-security etc. Note that success of Americans in creating new profitable companies is largely attributed to not fearing failure. Many successful businessmen have failed several times before finally succeeding, if each failure costs $100K and success makes $100M then it’s a worth-while investment! Dole is another factor that makes people fear failure less. If you want to hire someone to work in a start-up you can tell them “don’t worry, the dole pays enough to live on if this doesn’t work out”…

I lived in an Asian country for a number of years that had a very low rate of serious crime, which I put down to two items.

Significant video camera coverage everywhere, with all housing estates, condo’s etc also using the same mentality.

Every citizen, permanent resident, tempoorary worker had both their picture and finger prints recorded, which then included a national ID card with the thumb print and photo.

What it meant was the policing was absolutely not visible anywhere but you always knew somebody was watching…you didn’t ever think about it and it never really crossed the mind except when returning home where police beats, patrol cars etc are very more visible and the crime rates very much higher.

I am not sure this is an oxy moron but I did get that feeling. Then again most Asian races (large generialisation) are brought up in a less than fully democratic country but have significant freedom.

Many of these countries have no social security handouts, dole etc Makes me wonder where the more western world has failed.