What are these intracoastal waterways? The islands that protect all the East Coast.
Conversation
Why do all these rivers and intarcoastal waterways matter so much? Because it makes it dirt cheap to trade
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When trade is cheap, your goods can go anywhere.
Compare this with Russia, which doesn't have any cheap way to transport the goods from the middle of the country, which means these goods are either more expensive or simply can't be traded (eg, if perishable)
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I go into much more details in today's article, and also cover some dynamics from the rest of the world
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This is inspired by sources like the amazing Stratfor Monographic worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopol
Or Prisoners of Geography
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Follow me for more of these. I'm covering next:
- If Geography determines History, what determines Geography? (hint: Space!)
- What's the role of Technology? (hint: it changes over History).
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So summary:
- Impregnable
- Best fertile land in the world
- Very cheap to build other stuff too
- Super easy and cheap to trade
All of this creates lots of wealth
Worth keeping in mind when we talk about American exceptionalism.
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Replying to
Feels like a Guns, Germs, and Steel type argument but for modernity. Environmental determinism. I think there’s some of that, but also a strong element of tech path dependence (“flywheel”) at country scale a la Joel Mokyr, which also unfolded in other places at other times.
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Good article. Broadly agree. Thx for sharing!
You mean counterpoint to what? It's very much aligned with what I mean: the exceptionalism is not as much cultural as we like to think.
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I read it as: every big country thinks it’s exceptional, and has a narrative of it anchored in a Glotious Era, so it’s not really a good lens. I prefer less “big historical” reified terms of analysis. Like maybe “golden age” is the right construct to analyze, or “boom era”

