Quote Originally Posted by Beirut
It's part of the point. Many nations have more people than the US, a higher rate of literacy, and a longer history, yet have not come close to achieving what the US has.

If the US can achieve these things with such a mediocre education system and low rate of literacy, I'm inclined to think they must be pretty damn smart.

Imagine what they could do if they improved their schools...

Well, USSR has had satellites and men in space before the US, they had a better school system, and even now, the US and many others are inviting ex-soviet scientists to work for them.

If the schools were improved, there would unlikely be more achievements than there are already, as exceptionally smart people would be just as unlikely as they are now. And not every college graduate can design a space-ship. Average Joe would still be average, but he would be intelligent-average as opposed to medieval-peasant average.

Then again, I can only imagine the amount of monitoring CIA would have to do if everybody was smart...