alt Hacker News> expanded into land that was sparsely populated
Yes, that’s exactly the situation that results in highest income/wealth per capita. As long as that land can be utilized productively.
> expanded into land that was sparsely populated
Yes, that’s exactly the situation that results in highest income/wealth per capita. As long as that land can be utilized productively.
That last sentence is doing all the work though. North American indians lived on the largest continuous region of agricultural land in the world, connected with perhaps the best river network, and never had above subsistence levels of wealth per capita.