At 10:41 AM 23/08/2001 -0900, John Grigg wrote:
>So, what accounts for the economic dominance of the United States? Other
>nations have large populations and vast natural resources.
I often wonder how much of USA's "knowledge wealth" is due to accepting
immigrants. Early on, USA accepted people from all over the world, so it
became a melting pot of ideas. Later this grew again during the second
world war when Hitler and Mussolini scared a lot of the wealthy and
brightest people away from Europe. At its height the British Empire was a
center for bright minds from all over the planet. Earlier than that The
Roman Empire joined people together. The Persian empire did the same thing
and was a fertile place for minds to grow.
It seems to me that the place is almost irrelevant, as is the political
structure. What seems most important is that people can gather and share
ideas. Maybe with the internet now we will see this become a planet-wide
phenomenon.
As to monetary wealth, I wonder how much is due to plundering the poorer
nations of the planet, like my English ancestors did. You know, that old
trick of installing a puppet government which bleeds off wealth to the
foreign overlords and brutally suppresses any local revolts (think of
Indonesia, for instance).
Cheers,
- Miriam
(who really should get back to work intead of waffling on here)
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Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape?
A. They are both purple... except for the elephant.
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http://werple.net.au/~miriam
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Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
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