[ChainOfFools]

I'm not convinced that the unprecedented advantages of setting up base camp on the other end of a major global ocean on both sides of the landmass, the almost completely unfettered access to a continent of largely untapped natural resources with virtually no competition from established powers, of being in the right place at the right time to find enormous reserves of oil (and ultra-high grade anthracite coal) so close to the surface that it is possible to discover them by sight alone, and well over a century of widespread exploitation of pre-industrial society's version of market-disrupting robotic labor, AKA slavery, to undercut our competitors on top of all of our other advantages, have been sufficiently controlled for in this "we won because free market economy" analysis. Though I concede that the last one, slavery, is a feature you'd expect to emerge from of a pathologically under-regulated free market economy.

[WalterBright]

Allow me to present Japan. With none of those advantages, after WW2 they turned to free markets and became a powerhouse of invention and prosperity.

[lesuorac]

Allow me to present China.

Super authoritarian and yet super invovative.