The collapse of socialist countries like Venezuela, which not so long ago was the richest country in South America with enormous oil wealth, are always explained away by the economists as “The curse of plenty,” in which countries that rely on natural resource exports may tend to neglect education because they see no immediate need for it. Economists explain further that resource-poor economies like Singapore, Taiwan or South Korea, by contrast, spent enormous efforts on education. No one will say the obvious, that it is not abundant natural resources that leads to neglecting education, it is the lack of abundant brains that results in, not leads to, a neglect of education. Why is North and South America, south of the United States, traditionally poor and poorly educated, despite abundant natural resources? It is because the people are descended from two cultures that were still in the Stone Age when they were chanced upon by advanced Europeans – indigenous Amerindians and Central Africans who were brought to the Americas as slaves, and these two Stone Age peoples intermarried to produce the majority population of Central and South America. Are all cultures equal? No. To say that Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea emphasized education because they were resource poor is absurd. They emphasized education because that is what First World people do. Venezuela did not emphasize education because they were resource rich but because that is what Third World people do.

The Renaissance in Europe
Art and science were the rage
While Aztecs, Incas, Bantus
Lived their lives in the Stone Age
Knots on rope a written message
Captives murdered to please god
That they tend to lag behind us
Is in fact not very odd
But of course it isn’t their fault
For the white man did them in
We debased their shining culture
And now wallow in our sin