National Wealth Quotes
This view that the more people a country has, the richer it is, has gone hand in hand with the notion that a large population will assure a nation of extensive military prowess. However, both of these are now known to be false. The most heavily populated nations are among the poorest, and military prowess is more a function of the training of troops and the modern tools and weapons. Tiny Israel has demonstrated that many times since its origin. It has been attacked over and over by several nations at a time. Despite the fact that Israel was vastly outnumbered by enemy troops and weapons like tanks and planes, Israel has repeatedly demolished the more populous enemies. The world, observing this, no longer emphasizes trying to build a large manpower pool as it does not help militarily and it makes full employment very difficult.
For hundreds of years most people of the world believed this. In the latter half of the 20th century, however, a very small nation, Israel, not only defended itself against nations many times their size but did so against the attacks of all of them together. The Israelis became so powerful that many in the world began to rethink the Gervaise principle and placed more value on the educational and technological competence of a nation. Modern technology eliminated the criticality of population size.
Note that although the industrial revolution was beginning, the value of factories, inventory, machines, and raw materials were not yet recognized by some of the leading intellectuals of America. The perspective was totally agricultural.
