> One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture

No, that's just the 2010s propaganda fed to you by people who assert that not letting them do whatever they want is "bureaucratic". These very same people are completely fine lobbying legislature for more moat when they benefit from it.

The difference between "middle democracies" or whatever that means and the US is just that politics aren't corrupted enough yet that they can buy whatever they want.

I did some admin work for the startup around 5 years ago and I have to say EU countries specially mine Sweden is far more clear. In USA you are basically hopeless without a lawyer. but I did a search and for clarity of rule I searched and this came up using AI:

World Bank’s broad “Regulatory Quality” measure supports that direction: Sweden scored 95.28/100 and the US 90.57/100 in its latest comparable 2023 data. I couldn't find EU wide score.

I wanted to help someone to get work visa and I thought it is like Sweden and you just fill a small form, oh boy! We hired a lawyer for just filling the US side application.

Heavily country-dependent, in practice. The UK lets you set up a company online cheaply, quickly, and filing is easy. Insurance is plentiful and sensible, as are business bank accounts. The law is mostly straight-forward. Setting up a German limited-liability company OTOH involves putting down some ghastly large sum as a guarantee.

But yes, Americans are told they have the freest speech and the freest markets, and don't seem to question either.