> I wish there was a study which analyzes what the magic formula of the US is. I'll take a try from the geographical determinism viewpoint, which I believe in

> I wish there was a study which analyzes what the magic formula of the US is. I'll take a try from the geographical determinism viewpoint, which I believe in 100%: * Have natural resources in vast quantities: temperate arable land (cold enough to have winter 'resetting the fields', hot enough for high yields), oil. Cheap oil means cheap mining, cheap cost of transformation, cheap transports. Cheap everything. * Unify the country from natural border to natural border, yielding very little need for domestic defense * Be somewhat big, so that you can bootstrap any innovative company to a massive market and economies of scale quickly. Big also yields resiliency * Give relative freedom to compete, and give it early in history These 4 item are IMHO the base of many others which reinforce this strength (WW2 winner with no destructions at home, petrodollar enforcement, Hollywood machine, tech first-mover advantage) ---- Comparatively: * Middle-East, Africa, India, Central America, SE Asia, don't have the 'winter reset'. Nor do they a need to develop a culture that had to plan and organize for a whole year; one part being food-rich, the other quite not * Russia has huge unsafe borders (mandatory defense spending), elongated country (need for very creepy/scary internal security services, freedoms are quite limited) * Europe has depleted its natural resources (but benefited from the industrial revolution then!), was divided for a long time (no big market), has no oil * China has little oil, had a population matching its food production with very little to spare, had low freedom to compete * Other parts are not big (Oceania), nor were populated early (South America, Australia) ---- For the future, the main changes will be fossil fuels depletion, and climate change. Here is what could happen: * De(petro)dollarisation, as oil depletes and is less used in the industry * World going a tad multipolar. This means less pax americana, more wars * Resource wars shifting from oil to key materials for electrification like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt * Efficiency going down, massive simplification of lifestyles * Lots of countries going bankrupt like Lebanon. Can't feed without importing? Don't have industry that can export? Enjoy your worthless money * Fertilizers going more expensive with gas depletion. Lower amounts of higher priced food. Extensive world food programs * All this right when we need resources to adapt to climate change