Thanks Dan! Let me see if I get the points you are making. You are arguing that North and South Korea are very different despite originating with the same people and having same material conditions.

Keep in mind that I do believe ideas matter a lot, but would always want to ask WHERE does does ideas come from and WHY does this society produce or embrace those ideas while the other society did not?

I don't know Korean history well, so I may well speak of ignorance here but I assume that there was no large difference between the North and South in ideas produced and embraced. The great divide was created by a massive war. Hence a very tangible physical external force created the bulk of the division rather than any significant difference between the North and South in terms of generating and embracing ideas.

My view of things could perhaps be better framed as: I believe in history. I believe how societies work today are best understood by understanding the history of that society. For instance I find proclamations such as "Venezuela is a basked case because they embraced socialism" as very ignorant. It ignores decades of systemic problems, inequality and dysfunction in Venezuela. It was never a well functioning state. It has a stagnant economy long before Hugo Chavez took over for instance.

My native Norway for instance embraced socialist ideas long before Venezuela and work just fine. But if you look at our history we have a much long history of stability and sensible rule. Venezuela has an endless list of military coups in their history. Norway has precisely zero.

That is also a bit my criticism of giving to much space to ideas with a big "I". How an idea plays out in a society will depend profoundly on institutions, culture, material conditions, stability and many other things. Those things are often best understood by a careful examination of the history of that country.