[asdfgasd]

Mongolia's dominance was far before the industrial revolution. That argument is so devoid of context it's not worth addressing. They did achieve huge gains in wealth through imperialism anyway...

The USSR was imperialist, and did achieve massive increases to the standard of living of the elite through imperialism. It's much easier to feed Russia when you can starve Ukraine.

Colonial Britain and the Dutch East India company both achieved massive gains in wealth through imperialism.

The only argument you've made is that strong property and contract rights with rule of law and low corruption can prevent squandering the spoils of imperialism. I'm not sure if I agree with that, we're too early into the US's age of dominance to tell, but it's adjacent to my point.

[hcurtiss]

None of those countries stopped those practices. That is, they realized the end of their prominence due to policy positions and factors other than imperialism (or maybe even because of imperialism). That is, imperialism doesn’t necessarily make a country wealthy, and it certainly doesn’t keep it that way. Distant wars are expensive. See Rome. The US’s escapades in the Middle East May break it yet. No, I maintain that those imperialistic tendencies are not at all what’s made the US so prosperous, and they may in fact lead to its demise.