That's called a more advanced society. It's what we should strive for.. It's called learning from our past mistakes and devistation to critical resources to mine for non-critical resources.. You cant eat gold and copper. 
' Economically-traditional' may as well mean third-world now by the standards we should be seeking..  Don't you get it?  Trump lied, no one is laughing at us for letting other countries do the dirty work while we focus high-level thinking jobs.. They will however laugh at us if we are still burning coal while most others are not..