Imagine having the ability to see and hear the thoughts of everyone around you. You'd either be a superhero, the best politician, running a sane, stable, healt

Imagine having the ability to see and hear the thoughts of everyone around you. You'd either be a superhero, the best politician, running a sane, stable, healthy 'democracy' where people who were upset had things fixed just the right way - or you'd be a crumbled mess, an incoherent madman. There's no middle ground. With a singularly outsized ability like that, you simply could not function in a 'normal life.' Perhaps huge oil revenues are like that - without a stable cultural and political setup to use the resources wisely and for the benefit of the whole community (norway) - perhaps the only other course is a totally connected political mafia that extracts the value of the primary resource for itself and its supporters. A history of colonialism would set the country up for the second track.