This map submitted by Reddit user valeriepieris has been making the rounds on Twitter, and not only does it look cool, it underscores the fundamental truth of 21st-century economics—everyone lives in Asia.
We had an approximately 200-year span in which an enormous amount of economic growth and geopolitical influence were located in Western Europe and its colonies in North America, but it’s still the case that people mostly live in Asia. So now that all the countries inside the circle are politically independent and only a handful of them are still governed by totally insane ideologies, we should expect most of the action to happen where most of the people are. That means most of the manufacturing, but also most of the innovation and most of the popular culture. Both the producers and consumers of everything live over there. Bad government inside the circle can stall the catch-up process, but outsiders can’t force Asian countries to be poorly governed.
