Australia is kind of interesting in that it has a lot of preconditions for success (relatively high IQ & conscientiousness, high levels of social cohesion, stab

Australia is kind of interesting in that it has a lot of preconditions for success (relatively high IQ & conscientiousness, high levels of social cohesion, stable governing institutions, good education, high social & human capital in general) but just an enormously spread-out geography, both internally and externally, and a relatively tiny population. It ends up with a really odd economic dynamic where they have to leverage their internal resources because, eg, it's simply too much of a PITA to get a particular rare part shipped from a hemisphere away (from a supplier that isn't really set up to routinely ship to them anyway because it's not a huge market), and yet they actually end up being pretty good at it.