I’ve read some interesting books that connect our success to Christianity and Protestantism in particular. They delved into why South America with its abundant resources didn’t become another United States. Catholicism was claimed to be a key factor. I’m not saying they are right or wrong, but they were persuasive theses.
I’d have to be convinced that “Common Law” wasn’t the difference. Besides US and Canada, most New World nations- all the former Spanish ones I believe- are cursed with the Napoleonic “Civil Law”.
It is the difference IMO.
Of course all Man’s justice systems are as flawed as he is, but the Common Law empowers people more.
Supposedly (so I have been led to believe from casual reading only, not rigorous study) Simon Bolivar and co. did not believe in the concept of land ownership for common people, and that land ownership should only be for aristocracy. Without land ownership, owning the land under one’s feet, one is always in effect indentured to someone else and cannot enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. Hence, people living in such systems do not work as hard as people who work for themselves.
The concept of land ownership only for nobility extended as far north as Mexico and land won from Mexico by the US in the Mexican-American war of 1848. Basically, it was a lot easier for immigrants and commoners to own land if they were aristocracy or intermarried with aristocracy. The government of Mexico was nominally in favor of land owned by common people on paper, but in practice, they were no different from the Spanish in that regard, and the Mexican people remained repressed by their government up through the current era.
Studying Simon Bolivar and Columbian history is potentially instructive because Bolivar came to power in Columbia the 1820s, after the USA was founded. In order to attain the success of the USA, all he had to do was to copy its government. Yet he did not do that, and his Columbia failed. So (according to one line of thought, at least) the question boils down to what are the differences between the political systems of the USA and Bolivar’s Columbia of the 1820s.