What are the factors that lead USA to become the superpower today?

Question

I mean just few hundred years ago it was just a colony. Amazing!

Answer 1

every talented person from the world came to america
they also just somehow managed to have less corruption, and were lucky to be on a HUGE landmass that was extremely resource rich..they also set up very good infrastructure etc.

Answer 2

DeSaxe is right.

If you look at history, the biggest resource ANY country has is its people, its' human resources. (A wonderful book on this subject is FREE TO CHOOSE by Milton and Rose Freedman.)

America was born on a frontier. It does not matter if it was Jamestown in 1607, Santa Fe in 1680, Kansas in the 1880s, on a frontier you have to do what works... or die. Not what is proper, not what is traditional, not what some bureaucrat back in Spain or France or England says... what works. This made America a very pragmatic nation.

We also had the good luck to be founded by well educated men who had studied history. Most revolutions throughout history have either been lead by self-interested manicas (Hitler, Julus Ceasar, Napoleon) or self/poorly educated fanatics (Lennin, Ho Chi Mihn, Mao). Either way it didn't end well. The American Revolutionaries had read John Locke and Hobbes and knew their history. They knew where the Repbulic of Rome and the Democracy of Athens had gone wrong, and they wrote a Constitution to prevent that from happening here.

These things combined to give America a culture and legal system that made better use of human resources than any other, before or since. America, for all its problems, gives an individual more opportunity than any other nation on the planet. By removing barriers like class, caste, religion, race, and gender we open up more opportunities to more people. This means we have more people that are productive, and more people producing things means more things get produced. More science, more commerce, more industry, more technology, more wealth, more weapons.

I'll give you one last example. I have a daughter. Her IQ is probaby somewhere around 150 to 160, maybe higher. (She is so smart it is scary.) If she had been born in a most Islamic countries she wouldn't be allowed to drive, do anything without a male relative to oversee her, or even go to school. She wouldn't be able to create anything, invent anything, or produce anything (except baby boys). Since she was born in the USA she will be able to go to college and become an engineer, or a doctor, or military officer. America will benefit from her tallents.

By choosing to deny their women freedom the Islamic world has given up half their potential engineers, half their potential doctors, half their potential lawyers, etc. They have taken a pass on everything those engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc. could invent, create, and build. They don't produce as much, because they waste half their tallented people; then they wonder why they always wind up poor, backwards, angry, ignorant, and defeated.

Answer 3

Freedom.
People in the colonies were separated from the suppressive feudal powers of the European monarchies, where more people were able to pursue their own personnel endeavors with less restrictions. When the colonies became the United States the added separation of church and state increased this freedom. More people were able to benefit from their own labors, and the basic dream of owning ones own land became a reality. People gained wealth from hard work, making things, inventing things, and improving things. The idea factory was not regulated to the royalty or gentry of a feudal system like what was prevalent in Europe at the time. The US had a wealth of natural resources and the ability to capitalize on these resources. Wealth was being created rather passed down through inheritance. Plus the growing population continued to move westward and develop the rest of the country. I believe that the greatest reason for growth in the US was for the nation to capitalize upon it's greatest resource, it people.

Answer 4

Geographic isolation during the two world wars saved the U.S. and led it to become the superpower it is today. Look what happened to the British Empire. After WWII especially we were poised to provide the means and the know how to rebuild Europe and made a lot of money in the process.

Answer 5

We are loosing our superpower status.Yes we have nukes...But chavez is turning South and Central america to being leftist. We have a very small military compared to the 80's.Most countries think we are a joke,because we do nothing. Korea ,Chavez and Iran .Don't get to comfortable we cant be beat in war,unless we start tossing nukes around the world.

Answer 6

Technology and resources. With these we were able to make a lot of money and become a financial empire. Of course we are also able to adapt pretty fast to changes in the world, like darwinism; it is not the strongest that survive, but the ones most adapt to change.

Answer 7

All the talented people from Europe got on boats and went there, and wanted to do thing better than the stuffy governments they'd left behind.