> The US was created by its citizens. Any country can do that.
Every country is, in aggregate, created by some portion of its citizens, but I don't think that necessarily implies every country has an equally plausible path to the positive social conditions of the US (in fact, it's an open question if the US has a plausible path to keeping its positive social conditions). There was a very narrow window of conditions that applied where enough enlightenment thinking, reflection on classical thinking, local colonial strength, and enough self-interest for a broad number of colonial Americans met a concept of the public good, and we still got a union that needs a hell of a lot of perfecting. If you take the culture of the early 19th century US and backport it to the late 18th, I'm not even sure you'd get anything half as enlightened.
The point isn't that people shouldn't try, of course. The point is that even the state of a given functioning industrialized democracy is partly a matter of lots of factors that no one has control over, which makes it reasonable to describe them in terms of luck.
> I had many opportunities to become a billionaire. I didn't not because I was unlucky, but because I was stupid and unwilling to take the risk necessary.
It is wise to realize when one has lost a roll of the dice because of a passed opportunity to cast them. It's also wise to realize that luck would have played a role if you'd taken the opportunity.