> After all, all countries have land. It certainly does in preindustrial societes. If we look at Europe before the industrialization there is a very direct rel

> After all, all countries have land. It certainly does in preindustrial societes. If we look at Europe before the industrialization there is a very direct relationship between the amount of fertile land per capita and wealth/income per capita (Malthusian trap). In the 1600s and 1700s North Eastern US was probably the best place the world to live if we look at average QoL (.e.g. life expectancy alone was 10-20 years higher than back in England) and Americans were already very wealthy compared to average Europeans long before industrialization started mainly because of high abundance of land relative to population. Which resulted in extremely high natural population growth.