I don't know what leads me to think about this subject on occasion. America plays a unique role in the world.
First it is important to see the parts the world that are significantly different. Some categories overlap others.
* Most of the world is tribal and that includes vast portions of the globe: India, Indonesia, Malaysia the Arab world, Africa and the entire Latin world, including the Philippines.
* The second large population on the planet is based on hereditary elite controlling the society. This applies to most of Europe, some tribal areas, as well as much of the Latin world. A society based on an hereditary elite cannot be very productive because it stifles meritocracy and diversity.
* The third part of the world which can overlap both the first and second categories are societies based on extractive industries. Mining, oil, lumber, fishing, etc. This includes Canada, Australia, Norway and a few oil-rich countries.
* The fourth category is that part of the world that produces nearly everything we consume or view or use to build other products. These are countries with highly productive hard-working workforces. Germany is one, Holland, Israel, China, S. Korea, Taiwan and Japan, To some extent England is productive too. The most productive country on the planet is the United States.
The people in the productive countries that I have just listed above, but particularly in the United States, Israel and Japan are productive both in day-to-day output and also in innovation and new industries.
Therefore, when I think of the world in commercial terms, I am invariably going to think of the engines that make everything work, of which the United States is the greatest and Israel and Japan are important contributors. Germany is important too because the Germans work so hard but Germany is not in the league of the first three.
That's how I see the world.