The problem with cultural evolution in the modern world is that cultures are evolving too fast for other cultures to keep track of what exactly are the best traits of others which should be copied. To expand upon this, imagine how egalitarian and disorganised the hunter-gatherers

were. But then when many of them encountered settled societies with clear hierarchies and divisions of labour, between men and women, between metal workers and farmers, between nobles and priests, they realised that they were no match for them. Thus, they were either conquered

and assimilated or adapted the novel ideas of the settled culture. Some cultures later invented proper codified laws and courts, and these cultures were better able to preserve internal peace and promote internal commerce than their rivals, and thus their rivals copied these

systems when they saw how successful they were getting. All fine and dandy till now. But now in the modern age with an ever-increasing pace of cultural evolution, it becomes very tricky for a culture to figure out the cause & effect relationship between the various traits of a

rival culture and its success, because for all you know, the base for the success of the US today may have been its culture 50 or 100 years ago, and not the Western norms of today, which are very very different. But because our societies have not become smart enough to figure

this out, we tend to think, "Okay, country A is 10 times richer than us, they have great infrastructure, prosperity, military power, etc. Let me just copy everything they're doing like LGBT rights, free contraceptive pills, free abortions, no fault divorce, Atheism, wealth

redistribution, etc surely then we will end up just as successful as them!"

The problem of course, is that you really have no way of knowing if these traits the other successful culture adopted in the last 20 years are going to lead to prosperity or not. For all you know, you

are copy-pasting the social norms of a dying culture which is already past its peak.