> Here's one way. Does a country build walls to keep people in, or keep people out?

Ok, so this basically amounts to using average life satisfaction as your measurement for success of a country. You could easily use any other measure, though, if you have a different goal... for example, my first thought was that "continued existence" was the measure of success, and whichever nation lasted the longest would be considered the most successful (a sort of Darwinian measure)...

Look, I personally agree with your measure of success. I am a child of the enlightenment, and I do believe that state authority rests with the will of the people. However, that is not an a priori fact... not everyone agrees with that as the criteria you judge a civilization, and it is not some natural fact that everyone is equal and deserves liberty, etc. Natural law is "whoever survives survives".

> Here's one way. Does a country build walls to keep people in, or keep people out?

Can you make this into an actual measurable statistic or does this require us to just guess at the motivations of wall builders?

I'm wondering what you think the purpose of the wall along the Rio Grande is for. It was in all the papers for the last 6 years.

Or why the Soviet Union built a wall across Europe.

So, nothing quantifiable?

I guess the if we ask the people who built those walls they'll give us whatever answers they think are convenient for their propaganda purposes in the moment.