I'm assuming you mean that we should be trying to bring as many people as possible out of poverty and get them good educations (in which case, I wholeheartedly agree).
When you've built a lot of your identity on the idea that you are one of the smartest people in the room, it can be very hard to accept proposals that would challenge that. This would do so in 2 ways:
1) "Creating" more smart people means more competition for them—possibly even people who would end up being smarter than they are.
2) For a lot of them (at least from what I've come to understand), part of the "proof" that they are very intelligent is that they are very wealthy. If you start pushing the idea that intelligence doesn't automatically show itself and lead to wealth too hard, it's not very many steps from there to disproving the idea that wealth implies intelligence...and then how can they be so sure they're that intelligent after all?
That is exactly what I had in mind as I was writing it.
As for the rest, I haven't met such people as my circle is mostly academic and Scandinavian, however, evidence supports it. Evidence being how certain very prominent figures seem to enjoy the company of sycophants and yes-people.
When you've built a lot of your identity on the idea that you are one of the smartest people in the room, it can be very hard to accept proposals that would challenge that. This would do so in 2 ways:
1) "Creating" more smart people means more competition for them—possibly even people who would end up being smarter than they are.
2) For a lot of them (at least from what I've come to understand), part of the "proof" that they are very intelligent is that they are very wealthy. If you start pushing the idea that intelligence doesn't automatically show itself and lead to wealth too hard, it's not very many steps from there to disproving the idea that wealth implies intelligence...and then how can they be so sure they're that intelligent after all?