The GINI coefficient is better in those places - but much less so than his anecdotes would have you believe.
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: 'If you don't work you die.'"
--Rudyard Kipling
Your comment makes me believe you see "the professor" as somebody from another tribe/group and you now want to show that "they" are wrong. Why this urge to defend superiority or who is the happiest?
The research doesn't ask these questions - it's game theoretical models applied to societal cooperation. The whole Bezos incident is just a narrative hook to draw you in.
My whole critique is based on the fact that Mongolia has better wealth inequality on paper (and so his model would capture that) but that metric does not have a 1:1 ratio to what we actually care about. His paper doesn't address why maximizing on inequality alone could lead to bad outcomes - which is what I'm saying.
This is simply a piece of theoretical research whether cooperation strategies that we have historically observed in some parts of the world can evolve in a game theoretical model.
Where do you see a comment on whether living in Mongolia today is better (or worse) than living somewhere else?