Originally Posted by
miked
In the sixth grade my teacher asked my class a question. "Why has the U.S. been so much more successful than so many much older well established countries?" I asked my teacher what the correct answer was. His response was he had no idea.
If it's allright ... i'll take a run at this and throw out a few ideas.
The first would be that it really is a hard old world out there. It's survival of the fittest and we're the biggest, baddest, nastiest, most ruthless SOB's in the valley. This is our time to shine.
This leads into the second part:
The second part is that the fight to become number one is exhausting. The fight to maintain your position as number one is exhausting as well. There's always some healthy young upstart that's looking to knock you off the top of the hill and become number one themselves.
This leads to the third part:
(It's all about the impermanent nature of things.) We all have our day in the sun but then we get old and tired. We eventually fall by the wayside and another is born to carry on for us. The same thing applies to great nations too ! Empires rise and fall. Many of these older well established countries were the global superpowers of their day and then fell into decline. Just to name a few:
Germany ( WW1 & WW2 )
Italy ( The Roman empire )
Great Britain ( The sun never sets on the british empire. )
Russia / USSR
Portugal and Spain were once naval superpowers
Ancient Greece
Ancient China
Ancient Iran
The same will happen to the US someday. Nothing lasts forever.
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