> who, believe it or not, actually want to "get the f out"
It would be more noble to try and fix the culture, instead, since if all people that don't like backwards culture get the f out, by definition the ones who left are those that like backwards culture, thus ensuring it stays backwards forever. But I understand that people have right to take care of themselves first and don't owe anybody heroic effort on fixing a broken culture. Sometimes getting out it the best you can do.
Still, that does not mean somebody needs to change their culture so it would be comfortable for somebody else to move around.
> bigger countries
What's good in that, except more expensive and out of touch bureaucracy? Everything nice you can do in big country - like unifying standards, removing customs borders, etc. - you can also do as an agreement between small countries. But if (or, rather, when) bigger government wants to do something stupid - it would be nice for the stupidity to be contained. It is a basic evolutionary principle - monocultures are extremely fragile and one big mistake or one big adversarial change can kill the whole culture. Union of many diverse cultures is much more robust to both mistakes (culture that made a mistake goes down, and the rest take up the space) and change (again, cultures that can adapt poorly to a particular change, wither and get replaced by ones that can adapt well, but at least they not die out as a whole).
> in a small country, a local tyrant can really tyranize the s out of you
And in a big country, a global tyrant can really tyranize the s out of you, 100 million other people and 50 countries around you. See USSR.
> while in an empire-ish bureaucracy you can be free as hell
You obviously never lived in a tyrannical empire. I did (even though I had the luck of it being on its last leg by then). Not recommended at all.
> you get tons of freedom (as an individual) as a byproduct
No, you don't. Of course, in USSR in the 80s one was relatively more free than in NK, but it's just a peculiarity of specific time - in late 30s in USSR it was probably much worse than in NK now.