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Comment by dukeyukey | Hacker News Reader

Then you gotta explain places like Sweden and Germany, or why the richest, most productive US states are the ones with the strictest workers rights.

Chances are it's something else.

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I mean the US has some of the highest wages and least workers rights if you come pare countries.

Absolutely.

It also has functionally infinite land, weak neighbours, incredible energy resources, isolation from any other world power, a (relatively) egalitarian culture, and the single biggest patch of good, arable land on the planet.

No shit workers get paid lots in such a productive piece of territory.

Those factors are likely irrelevant to industries like tech.

And I mean Canada has all those same things and wages are much lower.

No, Canada doesn't have those things, namely arable land. Much of Canadian land is wasteland, too cold for much agricultural use. Its economy isn't that large either (much less population), and its currency isn't a major currency worldwide.

Canada has fertile farmland below about the 53 parallel. It’s massive.

Its does - still colder, less fertile, and less sunny than the US Midwest, and hardly comparable to the California Central Valley.

The Central Valley is not naturally fertile

The big effect of all these things is to make stuff cheaper and easier in the US. Cheaper land, cheaper energy, cheaper food. It means America can generate more capital with less inputs than anywhere else. That capital is then available to other industries, like tech.

Canada has lots of land, although it's generally much colder, less fertile, and just worse. They have oil, only it's thousands of miles away from the economic centres. They have arable land, also thousands of miles away from population centres (also far inland). And they border a hyperpower who could destroy them in a glance.

I'm not a US resident, not born there, but they are more ambitious

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