Quote:
Originally posted by Pornwolf
What I wanna know, Bhutocracy, is why the Australians, since they come from the same 'criminal cast-off' English stock we come from, why aren't they anywhere close to being a superpower instead of a country that is just a joint US/UK toy?
This isn't an insult because I love Australia but since we have so much in common heritage-wise, why are we so different?
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pathfinder hit it on the head.. for a start theres population and land mass. we are a 14th of your size population wise now.. i think all of us fit into new york.. and at the time when america exploded into the superpower it is we were only 5 or 6 million strong.. our landmass.. while huge is largely uninhabitable.. we don't have enough room for enough people to be super powerful (now).. maybe 30mill max..
resources.. no where near as rich as america in terms of minerals, oil and arable land.
australia is half america's age.. we're only 214 years old.. we didn't cut the apron strings to the UK that long ago.. and in some senses still haven't.. whereas you guys stopped being an english outpost a century before we did.. we haven't had nearly the same time to nationbuild.
we haven't been in the position to profit from war until the 70's timor invasion..
it's sort of a case of america being our older brother that got a much bigger inheritance and at this point in time america is running a large corporation as CEO while australia is still in Uni.. doing a few odd jobs on the side and still calls the palace to talk to mom from time to time.
you can't compare the two countries that way.. with twice the headstart and more resources it's a bit silly to think australia could ever match up to america.
even though we're more than capable of military might in the technological sense, we're barred from developing nukes, and most of our innovation gets sold to the US military..
we could obliterate Indonesia (20 times our size) if they ever tried to invade beause we have a hi-tech military to compensate for our extremely low body count.
we're a rich 1st world country that has more nobel prizes than japan, is regarded as in the top 3 places to live in the world.. as you can see in the list above.. even though you can't really measure these things.. brisvegas beats paris.. and our unofficial capital is #4.. but yet we have a relaxed attitude that belies what we're capable of.
but at this time.. where it's near impossible to muscle in to the big boy tier, all we can really do is align ourselves to our best interests.. even if that sacrifices our sovereignty to the UK or nowadays the US.
I still think it's a great place to indulge in the spoils of the west without many of the hassles.
I know I for one could never give up my 30 second walk to the water in a near tropical paradise.. for anything..