>take a relatively unguarded resource rich continent
>take the world's premier race of people
>filter so that only the most ambitious/enterprising/high agency of those people immigrate/settle over for ~300 years (until about 1920 or so), creating a mini evolutionary event
>they come over and immediately set about to building all sorts of business, economy, infrastructure, and have a literal genetic desire to work/achieve/consume
We have degraded since then but the general recipe stays the same. What's hurting us now is the loss of a sense of nation that really sent us into overdrive in the 1950's.