Actually, I work for a small tech company, and have to work around other people's undocumented interfaces all the time just like everyone else in this industry.
Your vision sorta works for software-based startups which are not capital intensive and dominated by labor costs. And I've seen first hand how telecommuting overcomes bad immigration law, allowing people in the west to cut the deals that cannot be done remotely on effectively behalf of foreign workers. Bad immigration law is indeed a government-induced problem, and this is one of the best workarounds we have.
Even then, the idea that no good local education is needed and that some body can just get a laptop, read some docs, and start making money is too optimistic.
But the larger problem is I don't think there is enough demand for YC-type stuff to significantly change the standard of living of a state. Consider how much money is dumped into SV startup before it makes money on average, and how few people SV employs due to the productivity of tech. This is not a good recipe for an entire nation.
The classic export goods are material goods; the far simpler unit economics ensure a steady stream of money back home, and the produced goods can (at least in principle) also be consumed domestically to make increasing in the standard of living not import-dependent. No country has gotten rich in the modern era without some of this, and I don't see this trend changing.
> Even then, the idea that no good local education is needed and that some body can just get a laptop, read some docs, and start making money is too optimistic.
This is viewing what I said in an impossibly narrow light. We don't need every man woman and child (of sufficient age to work) to be brimming with such initiative and self-agency. Just a subset of entrepreneurial ones who start businesses which bring these factors together and hire others. This happens on both sides of the ocean. If you can't hire the skills you need you train people. It's far cheaper to do in a country where your competition is the pay they get at home on the farm. This is exactly the situation in India. By the way did you see the thread about what a hassle it is to start a business in India?
Only a fraction of Americans work for large businesses. Generally more work for small businesses, so focusing only on giant scaled-up business models isn't even an accurate picture here.
Your vision sorta works for software-based startups which are not capital intensive and dominated by labor costs. And I've seen first hand how telecommuting overcomes bad immigration law, allowing people in the west to cut the deals that cannot be done remotely on effectively behalf of foreign workers. Bad immigration law is indeed a government-induced problem, and this is one of the best workarounds we have.
Even then, the idea that no good local education is needed and that some body can just get a laptop, read some docs, and start making money is too optimistic.
But the larger problem is I don't think there is enough demand for YC-type stuff to significantly change the standard of living of a state. Consider how much money is dumped into SV startup before it makes money on average, and how few people SV employs due to the productivity of tech. This is not a good recipe for an entire nation.
The classic export goods are material goods; the far simpler unit economics ensure a steady stream of money back home, and the produced goods can (at least in principle) also be consumed domestically to make increasing in the standard of living not import-dependent. No country has gotten rich in the modern era without some of this, and I don't see this trend changing.