Re: Space
If all it took was elbow room and natural resources, the Soviet Union would have been the most successful regime in history. China would have been an economic powerhouse compared to Hong Kong, and Japan would have been a complete failure.
Real estate is not the problem. My own theory, admittedly with no real data to back it up, is that over the last 200 years, the Europeans who tended to be more individualistic, freedom-oriented, and just too damn bloody-minded to get along with others well, ended up going to America. Europe tends to be socialist by natural selection.