Ignoring that four of the five biggest economies have thousands of years of history being a powerful country

I don’t understand the point they’re trying to make. “The United States is the only modern civilization in the world left alone”? What does that even mean? Does he/she think that in the past all these countries were powerful civilizations all at the same time? When Rome (Italy) was powerful, Greece was already past its prime (a.k.a. it was a “shithole”). Rome was so much better than Greece that some prominent Greek people arranged to have themselves sold into temporary bondage / slavery to Romans because once they became freed from that bondage they gained Roman citizenship.

The New Kingdom of Egypt existed between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC. It overlapped a little bit with the Greek empire, which started around 1200 BC. That powerful Egyptian empire was long gone by the time of the Romans, which is how we ended up with Mark Antony, a Roman, in charge of the “shithole” eastern provinces, which included Egypt under its queen Cleopatra, a Macedonian / Greek descended from a companion of Alexander the Great. Egypt gave way to Greece which gave way to Rome.

In more recent times, Before WWI Great Britain was the world’s largest empire, and by the end of WWII the reins had been handed by the new upstart, the USA. When the US empire crumbles, someone else will be the next major world power. That’s just how things go. Of course the past empires look like “shitholes” whereas the current empire looks powerful. Once the US is replaced as a world power, it will look like a shithole too.

To be honest, I do somewhat understand the point of view but not the US-centric view.

I do wonder why Italy is poorer on average on HDI and PPP than Finland despite Italy having been a “large civilization” back in the day. Rome was flourishing before Common Era while Finland went straight from the Bronze Age to the Middle ages.

Sure, both were Axis powers but this doesn’t explain the difference. Finland paid heavy reparations to the USSR, suddenly developed industry and became “rich” in less than a century for putting money into tech (???)

Wait a few decades

Implying US isn’t a shithole

Italy is also a young country

If by civilized they mean a powerful imperialist power, which honestly is typically what that word is used to mean tbh, then its because the major imperialist powers pre WW2 had their infrastructure obliterated giving America, which was mostly untouched, free reign to form its empire. It also has very good strategic positioning in that it has two large sea borders which are not only seperated from the “old world” by large oceans but also both coasts are not easily accessable by the other. You’d have to go through the drake passage or the strait of Magellan which are both dangerous voyages in order to access both coasts. Later the Panama canal is built but thats US controlled so good luck with that either. This makes invasions quite hard. Further, the monroe doctrine allowed them to extract some serious resources from latin america while also giving them political power in these regions meaning they gained incredible wealth and secured their southern border. The northern border was obivously secure due to strong allyship.

So the reason it is so powerful while being so young is essentially timing, positioning, and luck.

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Guy from Turkey forgets to list Turkey as a former empire that is now a shithole

Oh don’t worry anon, eventually the US will join them, and if current events are any indication it won’t take much longer.