I've always looked at Yang as "typical mind fallacy" in action. Coming from SV culture, he assumes if you give everyone 10k/year, we all create startups, learn violin or a second language, volunteer in their communities, etc.
Policies that may work for a small, highly-motivated segment of our country do not necessarily scale.
The American spirit is giving people opportunities and seeing what they would do with them. That's American history; it's not a product SV culture at all.
Only the US has had a vast, rich land that you can expand freely into (ignoring the natives, cough) once cities, communities, and markets mature to the point where you have no more opportunities left for you. No other nation in its history has even come close to amount of opportunity that the US has always given to its people.
Policies that may work for a small, highly-motivated segment of our country do not necessarily scale.
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