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One model I think works is that innovation = genius + reach.
Let's clone Archimedes and put him in Sub-Saharan Africa. How much GDP will he generate as a sheep-herder in Mali? My guess is - not that much more than a normal sheep-herder.
Now put him into a computer-science class at Stanford graduating in 1990. The same genius could easily generate billions in GDP.
The United States has a more strongly-connected market than Europe. A genius in the US can impact the world much more strongly than one in a small European country. That European may not even be a native English speaker. And Facebook for Luxembourg isn't exactly going to take off, is it? Not that it matters. As you rightly point out, the best ones often go to the US anyway.
The better question, IMO, is what about China? China has more than 3x the population of the US and an average IQ that is perhaps 5 points higher. I'm not going to do the math right now but I believe this would imply that China has something like 10x as many 145 IQ people as does the U.S.
If these people can connect with each other in meaningful ways, it's possible that Chinese-language research and technology will outstrip English-language equivalents in a completely irreversible way. There is no greater reservoir of high IQ people on the planet than China. These would-be world shakers are kept back by either the CCP or some fundamental attribute of Chinese culture/genetics. I think it's probably the CCP. Overseas Chinese like Terrance Tao perform as would be expected based on IQ.
My neighbors are Chinese and both are very intelligent working in high skilled fields. One is a biomedical engineering PHD working in research and the other is a math professor at a not-quite-Ivy level university. They blame Chinese culture at the base level for this and the actions of the CCP being a reflection and institutionalization of that same culture. Its similar to what we call "crab bucket" mentality, but not exactly that. According to them you can become wealthy in China, and many do, but after you reach a certain level of success it actually makes your life worse. If you achieve a level of financial success in China of say 1 million USD a year of more all of you immediate family will quit their jobs confident in the fact that you will support them indefinitely. Your parents, especially your mother, will expect their own standard of living to be comparable to yours immediately if not sooner. You'll be expected to at the least "find jobs" for dozens of cousins and other socially important members of your family's Guanxi ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi ). Your success wont be your success, it will be everyone's good fortune. So there is no point in working harder and smarter just to have an objectively worse life by becoming wealthy; your family and patronage network will never stop having their hands out as long as you have something to take.
Their solution was moving to the US and lying about how much they make. They send a few hundred USD a month to their parents, which is more than the parents make and represents the majority of their extended families income. If their parents knew how much they actually made they would demand much, much more. They still have to field relentless demands that they get family members into the US somehow, and they have to explain that the US doesn't work that way and they can't just "put in a word" with immigration or otherwise grease the wheels.
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I mean a big part of it might be that a higher percent of Chinese geniuses go into things that don’t directly contribute to the bottom line(like bureaucratic ass kissing).
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