Not quite. The new owner will have all the renovation they were planning anyway paid by the insurance company as they buy the insurance benefits along with the house. This is not fiction, it did happen to me, as the seller. The price did not change a cent.

The country with the constitution that is closest to what a democracy would be is Switzerland. For the rest of us : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE

Do not forget it's originally a russian oblast ;-)

Korea being thorn into ever since does not seem to be a great example, but that's not really the issue. First, we might want to define "success". Does this word means that the people should start to live and think as westerners do or that they could leave the way that suits best the majority of them ?
Once success defined, we could then asses its rate: 50% and around means sheer luck. Only if over, say, 75% would seriously suggest that the action was worth it. I'm afraid we're very, very far from it.

Sure, it worked so well in Irak and Afghanistan and so many other places for the past 70 years ;-)

Hard to tell which is worse...

Yes, this idea that there should not be a centralized power and that people should organize themselves must be stopped. ;-)

Umberto Eco had similar takes, especially on exclamation marks and the use of three dots at the end of a sentence. He used to say that feeling the need for either means your sentence is too weak.

Pareil