I mean, I'm sure in some cases being bigger or smaller is helpful. It just feels incredibly lazy, borderline disingenuous to throw it out there without bothering to connect the dots or analyze how size would matter in that specific case.

> small states turn out to be better for humans

Source/examples of this? In Europe, the larger countries like the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain don't seem obviously worse off to me than their smaller counterparts. Like if you compare the UK to Ireland, Germany to Austria, Spain to Portugal, etc.