You will note most of these super powers gather raw resources from other countries. The country that has raw resources tends to be more technologically backwards.
> But that doesn't diminish the importance of raw resources, rather the contrary.
It does diminish the importance of raw resources, so much so that simply having raw resources doesn't do anything for an economy.
Never did I say raw resources aren't required. But in the modern economy it takes a back seat to countries that are technologically mighty, because tech is what determines the power of a country not the availability of resources.
> It just adds the importance of a strong military and being ruthless.
If you think raw resources are taken by force think again. Most countries that have raw resources simply export their resources. Those raw resources move to other countries and are transformed into technological artifacts which are then exported back to the origin country in a form of lower entropy.
What this shows is that their is ZERO correlation with technological power and positional vicinity to resources. Power is in information more so than it is resources as all countries that are or were once considered super powers with High GDP had one thing in common: High Technology and not necessarily easy access to raw resources.
In fact, anthropological studies of human civilizations show the opposite. Low technology societies tend to appear around places where resources are plentiful and vice versa. The theory is, is that low resources necessitates ingenuity while high resource areas do not.
Think about the food resources located in Europe vs the amount of resources in tropical africa. The tropics are plentiful yet high functioning economies tend not to develop around these areas.
Please be more knowledgeable before voting me down. Thanks.
