>>78944294>>earth kingdom>>northern water tribe>>advanced>>implying firebending isn't the most useful bending for a modern society >>implying the ability to create cheap, clean electricity at will wouldn't revolutionize the entire planetNah. Earthbending all up in that shit, by orders of magnitude.
Earthbending means NEVER having crop problems, lack of shelter, advanced metallurgy, defensive structures, advanced tool design, etc. etc. etc. Add in metalbending from the Legend of Korra and things get crazy really fast.
Keep in mind, something like 1% of all Earth citizens are benders. And the Earth Kingdom is spectacularly close to the current population of China, somewhere around several hundred million to a billion citizens on one large continent. For every earthbender, there are perhaps hundreds or even thousands of non-bender civilians surviving thanks to the ridiculous power earthbenders have for civilization advancement. And then you factor in that a lot of earthbenders don't actually use their abilities to help their communities in any meaningful way. Which means the reality is that for every Earthbender, probably 10,000 people even exist.
And then you get the non-benders in there. And that's where the really crazy shit hits the fan. With every earthbender possibly supporting thousands of non-benders, non-benders are critical to filling in the gaps an earthbender can't. Smelting, hunting, trade, politics, science.
The smartest guy in Avatar is Sokka, a kid who can't bend a paperclip. Over the course of the original series, he proceeds to create maybe a dozen useful inventions which are still in use or radically improved upon by the time Legend of Korra occurs. Without bending, he has to outsmart the blockages in his path. This is largely posible entirely thanks to the Earth Kingdom being a place where the peple have no major need for resource wars and instead have largely dedicated their talent to learning.
