Presumably the message we should take from Dr. Gould is that the western world should shower more of its resources on the children of other peoples across the world and less on its own children, in the vague hope of finding that talent in a field or sweatshop.

It makes you wonder whether any other civilization would even consider such a policy, and what the long term prospects are of any civilization that has so little regard for its own success in competition with other civilizations that it would even think about it.

It also makes you wonder what could cause a civilization to adopt that kind of mindset. Surely such an idea would have been laughed at by the western world 300 years ago, or even 100 years ago. Now that kind of mentality seems totally within the normal range. What has changed?