Should a country be considered lucky if it sits on top of vast oil reserves? Or have caves studded with gems or mountains of gold?
Perhaps not.
Columnist Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times wrote an interesting article about how there's an inverse correlation between a country's natural and its human resources:
EVERY so often someone asks me: “What’s your favorite country, other than your own?”
I’ve always had the same answer: Taiwan. “Taiwan? Why Taiwan?” people ask.
Very simple: Because Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction — yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence — men and women. I always tell my friends in Taiwan: “You’re the luckiest people in the world. How did you get so lucky? You have no oil, no iron ore, no forests, no diamonds, no gold, just a few small deposits of coal and natural gas — and because of that you developed the habits and culture of honing your people’s skills, which turns out to be the most valuable and only truly renewable resource in the world today.
lol Minecraft.
Also, Friedman is a deeply confused person, which comes out in his writing.
It certainly has a good agriculture industry, though one can argue that Taiwan's fishing industry isn't big enough for a nation-scale.
Friedman's point is that Taiwan's main "natural resource" is its human capital, not things it derives from the ground. Like Singapore and Hong Kong, it seems like countries that don't have sufficient natural resources turn very resourceful on utilizing its people. That's not a bad thing.
Taiwan, like other Asian countries, did suffer tremendously in the hands of the Japanese during WWII. If Japan stripped Taiwan of its natural resources, then the end game is the same: Taiwan is now still a country without natural resources.
I agree that Taiwan is a de facto country, though the reason that Taiwan isn't recognized by most countries in the world is not because they fear violence for Taiwan. It's because China is geopoliticaly more powerful.
If you are depending on people like Friedman to inform you on anything, you are likely to remain ignorant.
Blame their government, blame their culture - whatever. Point is, they still manage to squander that resource.
It has no mining to speak of, no timber, no oil, no natural gas and no gold. It does have some coal, but that's not very significant.
Argentina has overabundance of resources: oil, copper, gold, silver, natural gas, uranium, lead, very fertile land, wood.
Yet it is squandered. Creating an unstable, uneducated and poor country.