This is what bothers me with most people who want to bring change to the country. A lot seem to believe that it is easy to revise the internal culture of our country, rather than to build on what we are really good at, or have a comparative advantage on. I’m looking at you would be industrialist or technologist. We have an abundance of beautiful places, a naturally happy friendly people.
8. Countries have to start from where they’re at. If you’re constructing policy advice, you can either build on what a country is really good at or you can try to revise the internal culture of the country. If you’re going to do the latter, come out and say so. Most of my policy recommendations are based on the former approach, namely strengthening what (the better-functioning) countries already are good at. I’m not suggesting that countries never change, but getting such changes right by deliberate policy interventions is very hard to do. I wish to stress this point applies to the pro-U.S. as much as the pro-Europe side.
via Marginal Revolution: The Chait-Manzi debate.