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Nostromo by Joseph Conrad was published in 1904, 107 years ago. These are the words that Conrad put into the mouth of an American financier. The world has changed little in those 107 years.

“But there’s no hurry. Time itself has got to wait on the greatest
country in the whole of God’s Universe. We shall be giving the word for
everything: industry, trade, law, journalism, art, politics, and
religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith’s Sound, and beyond, too,
if anything worth taking hold of turns up at the North Pole. And then
we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying islands and
continents of the earth. We shall run the world’s business whether the
world likes it or not. The world can’t help it—and neither can we, I
guess.”