Define successful?

(You'll probably want to avoid metrics like happiness indices and life expectancy though)

AnimalMuppet 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

At a minimum, it's been a place that people wanted to come to, more than they wanted to come to anywhere else in the world. That's successful as measured by people.

(Or at least, people wanted to come until the last couple of years...)

	▲	pixel_popping 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sure it's true, that seems to be mostly for economic reasons (which might define success, arguably), but I bet a lot more people would dream about living let say in Thailand than in the US, they just can't because they don't have the means.

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returningfory2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fair point. Mainly I agree with the sibling comment: the revealed preference of many people around the world, including many people from the richest countries in Europe, is to move the United States and then settle permanently. I think that means a lot.

Obviously you can also say that the US is geopolitically successful because of its global military and diplomatic dominance, but I account zero value to this.

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dmitrygr 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nobel prizes? Manned moon landings? Reserve currencies? AC units per capita?

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greggoB 2 days ago | parent [-]

Are any of these stipulated as criteria anywhere?

There's also proportion of adult in prisons, people who believe in angels, and the mass-shooting high score

> AC units per capita

This gave me a laugh

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MisterMower 2 days ago | parent [-]

Despite all of those things people still travel across the world to give birth in US just so their posterity can become a part of our country. What other metric do you need?

	▲	greggoB 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Not everybody across the world is doing that in equal measure (I've not heard of a concerted effort by Europeans travelling to the US to give birth in contemporary times). People migrate for economic opportunity. South Africa is not a rich country, but sees millions come in from the SADC for this reason, despite some pretty big social problems. The US is nothing special, it's just a particularly large market of economic opportunity with a history of allowing in migrants. If China was significantly more migrant friendly, we'd see the same happen there. None of this specifies that the US has some secret recipe for success that papers over some of its obvious and glaring deficits.