I have a counter theory to @powerfultakes Karlin's idea that the so-called O-Ring industries and a tiny smart fraction being responsible for broad based economic development. To the contrary, I feel it is likely having a surfeit of midwits is actually necessary because the chief
driver for all progress in whatever field you care to measure is competition. In human behavior this is no less true. When I say midwits I don't actually mean stupid people, but literally people within 1 standard deviation above the mean in intelligence, your average 100-115 IQ.
Why this is so critical is because having a lot of people in your society here creates a lot of middle class competitive pressure that impacts both up and down the socio-economic ladder. Having 115 people working as delivery men is suboptimal in the individual sense but it is
extremely productive for delivery businesses as you can capture a lot of that surplus productivity from having smarter workers to reinvest reinvest. To make your country rich basically you need to suppress labor's present share of income to generate future returns. There is no
way around this and no matter how many fancy words and theories the chicken entrail prognosticator known as economists come up with, you can't escape this blunt reality. Having a huge midwits cohort doesn't preclude you from having a sizeable smart fraction, it's usually actually
an outright prerequisite. But having more midwits enforces labor discipline across every industry by making sure there are a lot of people there to replace you for the job so you'd better work even the not glamorous ones. The skill deficit of poor underdeveloped countries isn't
in the absolute number of skilled workers. It's that the selection pressure of them is insufficient so they can get by with doing a lot less. Smart people are actually kind of lazy and if you can optimize by earning more while doing less they sure as hell will. What this leads
is a sort of underdeveloped "financialization" of the economy where because of the lack of selection pressures most people who are capable of being extremely productive are just being extremely productive at rent seeking. If you have an 115 IQ in a place where that is rare, you
aren't going to be delivering food or even being a middle manager. You are going to be doing something that pays a lot relative to your local average but usually involves no real work, something that wouldn't be an option for a society with a lot of midwits who give competition.
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