I play an RTS game called Age of Empires 2, and even if a civilization was an age behind in tech it could still outboom and out-economy another civ if the population ratio was 1 billion : 300 Million. Like it wouldn’t even be a contest. I don’t understand why China or India wouldn’t just spam students into fields like STEM majors and then economically prosper from there? Food is very relatively cheap to grow and we have all the knowledge in the world on the internet. And functional computers can be very cheap nowadays, those billion-population countries could keep spamming startups and enterprises until stuff sticks.
In: Economics
The answer is Capital. Developed countries have significantly more capital.
What is capital? That is a deep question, but for the purposes of this question let’s use a simple definition : machines that allow you to generate wealth.
Countries like the USA have significantly more capital than countries like China. More tractors, factories, steel foundries and more. An industrial machine staffed by one person can produce more than 100 people without industrial machines. The USA has much much more of these industrial machines and that at its core underlines the difference in wealth.
TLDR: You don’t need a billion people when you have machines that can do the work of a billion people.
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