How to Develop Your Country

I am sorry for the amount of reading you need to do to get to my point. At least it is not about North Korea! Count your blessings!
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Max Weber (Max Weber in English, Mahx Veyber in German and Axmay Ayberway in Pig Latin) is a famous sociologist. Take my word for it or don't... whichever. (You clicked that, didn't you! You DON'T trust me!! We will have to talk about this later... grr.)
His theory was that capitalism and the rise of Western Power came from the Protestant Ethic. He felt that the unique developments of Western Civilization as realized by the Renaissance and the breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church (and all their creepy priests!) was the impetus behind Western Cultural Ascendancy and Power.
This is an interesting take on history. Take my word for it or not. It does have one little weakness. Good Ol' Max died in 1920. Which means it cannot explain why Japan also rose to the top of the economic heap.
In other words, he was wrong.
I apologize in advance for this, but we have to do some math. Yes, it does involve "carrying numbers", but I think they will all be easy to carry. First of all, we need to understand which countries are developed. Check out this graph and data. In fact, China has surpassed Japan in GDP – just last year. Nonetheless, Japan ranks right up there in economic power along with the US (population of more than 300 million) and China (population of more than 1.3 billion). America is the most salient feature (dare I say) of Western Civilization. Let's not talk about food and so on here; I mean in economic and political power – Max Weber goodies. China has also come along strongly in recent years (we will get back to that), but still lags behind in some key ways. But look at Japan!
Japan has about one third the population of the US and only 10% of China's population but is keeping pace across the economic board! (China, on the other hand, even surpassing Japan on the totals, comes in dismally short on the population averages.) (Am I boring you yet?)
So... How is it that Japan, a non-Western Country (no Protestantism, and definitely no Renaissance), has managed to accomplish this incredible feat?
Toilets.
Yes, you read that correctly, toilets.
There are basically two types of toilet on our planet: the "squat pot", and the other, the sit pot.
If you draw a lines around our planet, dividing the squat pot users from the sit pot ones, you will see a clear and definitive line dividing the developed and less-developed worlds.
No, I am not making this up.
Look at Europe. On the northern side of the Bosphoros and Dardenelles the sit pot reigns, but when you cross into Turkey, the squat pot is the norm (though they have been changing a LOT of late in hopes of getting into the EU).
Yes, it is the sit toilet that accounts for the West's rise to prominence, not the Protestant ethic or the Renaissance or whatever it was that earlier socio-philosophers were blathering about.
Something about installing a toilet that requires you to sit down rather than squat is what makes for the progress and development of modern societies. The famous statue, entitled "The Thinker", is a good example. Rodin obviously didn't carve the toilet into the statue, but he might well have.
Because, that's the point. If you use a squat pot, you are in and out, so to speak, but with a sit pot, there is a more philosophical, contemplative attitude. People keep magazines and other reading material in their toilets (Pterosaurish has even seen toilet paper with pithy sayings and whatnot written on it.)
It was this "time out", this meditative opportunity everyday that gave rise to the hyper-productivity of Western Civilization.
And, it also explains Japan. In the immediate post-war era, Japan (like the rest of Asia and most of China today) was dominated by the squat pot. Completely. But in its prodigious effort to develop and catch up with the West, Japan made a dramatic switch within a very short time frame. In 50 years, no less, Japan has gone from Squat Pot Dominant to Sit Pot Dominant and has even made significant contributions to the evolution of the sit pot with its "washlet-type toilets". They have done the West one better and – quite frankly – it shows. I am not saying that anal retention is what provides the impetus to development, but Japanese trains do run meticulously on time.
China, for its part, has been a hard charger of late, but their installation of sit toilets (never mind the toilet technology itself) lags behind. Worse, they seem more concerned about sending people into space and developing jet airplanes than the proliferation of what really matters: sit toilets.
Developing countries need only to concentrate on one thing: how many sit toilets can be installed around the country. Once most of the citizens are using them, the country will be on the edge of development and even first world leadership!