Agreed. As someone who spends most of their time on performance related issues, it's important to keep in mind that sometimes performance issues are strongly tied to the architecture of the program. If the data structures aren't set up to take advantage of the hardware, you'll never get the results you're hoping for. And setting up data structures is often something that needs to be thought about at the beginning of the project.
I find that being intelligent simply means that one makes more convoluted problems for oneself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's not really a win (with respect to being happy).
Then the USA should also enact obligatory military service. So that everyone would know how to use those guns. And see them as a grave responsibility, not just a right.
If anyone is interested in a fanciful take on reducing the world's population in order to save it, I can happily recommend Channel 4's two-season Utopia series [0]