N1 you make an excellent point. However, even in our "overdeveloped" countries we continue to make the mistakes of the past, and relearn the lessons of the past (even though these are well documented in our own history books). We've refused to acknowledge the very real opportunity costs of overregulation, and the inefficiencies of taxation and bureaucracies. None of this is new--Adam Smith wrote of this over 200 years ago. With no tangible evidence whatsoever, we're keen on establishing taxes and "carbon credits" scams (vice build new energy sources), lumping CO2 (which is actually "good" stuff) in with real pollutants (which are bad). Our oil spikes up; rather than building nuclear and renewable energy sources, we sue each other and chase our tails investigating "big oil." We haven't heeded the warning about voting moneys out of the public treasuries, see no alarm in spending in tremendous deficits, and have ignored Ben Franklin's essential liberties concept with self-paranoia. We can't even employ lessons learned from wars in our very recent past.
From the outside looking in, why should another country listen to us ?