The path of least resistance is obviously to go where the infrastructure is.

Also, smarts needed to bootstrap modern infrastructure from scratch with limited resources are different than smarts needed to design a popular app, for example.

Typically smart people arent limited to specific areas of being smart. That's kind of the definition of being smart is figuring things out.

Americans built modern infrastructure with our limited 'average' brains.

Should be simple for actual smart people.

>Typically smart people arent limited to specific areas of being smart. That's kind of the definition of being smart is figuring things out.

Having worked with everyone over the course of my life from PhDs to construction workers, I'm going to have to hard disagree on this one. Just because someone is gifted in one area, does not mean their intelligence or domain expertise applies everywhere. Domain expertise is a real thing.

It's about maximizing your potential, and being in the best environment to do so. Building up that capacity might sound nice in theory, but in practice, you go where you can to get the best results possible.

there's a billion people in some countries..and none of them are smart in the vaguely defined field of building infrastructure?

They just happened to all be super smart at coding Java?

If you’re a bright kid, it’s way easier to get really good at Java then to get really good at boot strapping infrastructure with limited resources

Sources needed.