There’s an even bigger cherry-picking problem, however, in that they’re all based on US returns.
That doesn’t seem like it’s that big. While there are about 196 countries, most of them are much smaller and less well-developed than the US, and the US was most likely chosen for this reason. It’s not simply the luckiest country.
On the other hand, if the US had better returns based on something other than luck, you’d expect people would keep investing there until the returns drop.
It’s due to a combination of being old and having sustained abnormally high growth. If it’s sustained, then it’s not just luck. You can invest in the US and know that it will continue growing like it did before. It’s not cherry-picking.
That doesn’t seem like it’s that big. While there are about 196 countries, most of them are much smaller and less well-developed than the US, and the US was most likely chosen for this reason. It’s not simply the luckiest country.
On the other hand, if the US had better returns based on something other than luck, you’d expect people would keep investing there until the returns drop.
The US is unusually large and developed precisely because it has had abnormally high growth (and also, therefore, high immigration).
It’s due to a combination of being old and having sustained abnormally high growth. If it’s sustained, then it’s not just luck. You can invest in the US and know that it will continue growing like it did before. It’s not cherry-picking.
Kinda the point of survivorship bias and other selection effects is that you can get what looked like ‘sustained’ performance just by luck...
Said many people in every bubble ever.