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It seems to me that many places outside of East Asia, mostly but not exclusively in the Anglosphere and Northern Europe, had within living memory (and in quite a lot of them still have, as a matter of fact) safe schools, clean streets, and as much innovation as there ever has been. The greatest advances in science and technology took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time with a much more restrictive social order than we have today, and I remain unconvinced that the removal of these restrictions through successive waves of progressivism and liberalization over the past century has done anything to make us more innovative in engineering, literature, etc. One would be better off making arguments for those changes on deontological grounds than by any utilitarian calculation of scientific or artistic output.
I too am thoroughly unconvinced that progressive shibboleth tolerance, etc drives innovation and economic development.
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I’ll go one better. Removal of those norms and expectations has stymied progress as people must put more and more effort into stop-gap work arounds for things that just worked in previous decades. It also creates a situation where kids don’t get to learn to be independent as they need to be under the watchful eyes of adults because bad things can happen if you just let a kid wander around.
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