The Country Builder Exercise Perpetuates an Outdated and Unhelpful View of Politics
The idea that there is only a limited amount of resources available to a people when building a state is inaccurate, because inputs compound on each other, education leads to the ability to more science and build better infrastructure and hold a more helpful participatory democracy- and governments do not have to choose between welfare and skillful diplomacy. To imply that these are limited functions is to imply that certain countries cannot attain certain qualities of life because of limited government resources. For example, the conservative insistence that we must invest heavily in the military and that role is why we cannot have healthcare/welfare is not true, because we can obviously have both (even though I disagree that we should) and further investments do not put a drag on the whole system they actually support it. Infrastructure allows mobility of workers which helps businesses like subsidies would etc. It's a bizarre exercise that wasn't even a particularly good statement of values, and implies that states have to make sacrifices between these things when most often they do not.