The best thing about being from a large country (either by population, landmass or both) is that there are typically lots of resources to pool into making the society in that country prosperous and healthy. Sometimes, however, these same countries choose not to take full advantage of such abundance because they wish to manage themselves in ways that don't necessarily jive with the idea of shared largess. I think that's human nature. What confuses me sometimes is why we even bother.
I live in Canada. It is absolutely, mind-blowingly huge in size and resources and has relatively few people. So even though we do not seem to have the same spirit of economic growth as say, the USA, we still find ourselves to be one of the more prosperous countries in the world. But we don't seem to fully embrace the opportunity that an integrated economy from sea to shining sea presents. Case in point, we have today seen an affirmation by the Supreme Court of Canada upholding the rights of a province to regulate inter-provincial trade. The case revolved around the right of a citizen to transport beer from one province to another (he lives in a border town and there are no restrictions on movement between the provinces)(https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/04/19/supreme-court-upholds-laws-limiting-amount-of-alcohol-moved-across-provincial-borders.html). So today we remain limited in inter-provincial commerce for the purposes of protecting provincial economies. I don't disagree with the ruling based on the current law. I'm just not sure if it still makes sense in today's world.
The question that always arises to me when these matters come up is: Why have a large country with a centralized government if we can't enjoy all of the benefits of the affiliation? I don't mean to suggest that I would rather have only the central government but why should we have some matters, like funding for transit and health care where we are forced by law to share the wealth with other provinces and some other areas where a province can protect and insulate its own economy? Why have federal banking regulation and provincial securities regulation? Why not just let the provinces govern themselves and deal with import/export issues in the context of the larger inter-provincial relations?
It seems that larger republics, federations, etc that have regional/provincial/state levels of government cannot help themselves from centralizing more than they should and then only throw a small bone to the regional governing bodies such as control trade and commerce in niche industries. For those of us who actually value some level of freedom and autonomy in our lives, it certainly seems like it would be worth revisiting how a group of provinces or states could effectively form a union for everyone's betterment.
CW