I would suggest to Facebook and Apple that they relocate operations to North Dakota to expose their geeky entrepreneurs to those who drive trucks and plow snow. Who knows — they might be able to afford a house, get married before 35 and have three rather than zero kids.
The densely populated coastal corridors from Boston to Washington and from San Diego to Berkeley are where most of America’s big decisions are made.
Those in Boston, New York and Washington determine how our government works; what sort of news, books, art and fashion we should consume; and whether our money and investments are worth anything.
The Pacific corridor is just as influential, but in a hipper fashion. Whether America suffers through another zombie film or one more Lady Gaga video or Kanye West’s latest soft-porn rhyme is determined mostly by executives who live in the thin Pacific strip from Malibu to Palos Verdes.
The next smart phone or search engine 5.0 will arise from the minds of tech geeks who pay $2,000 a month for studio apartments and drive BMWs in Menlo Park, Palo Alto or Mountain View.
The road to riches and influence, we are told, lies in being branded with a degree from a coastal elite campus like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or Berkeley. How well a Yale professor teaches an 18-year-old in a class on American history does not matter as much as the fact that the professor helps to stamp the student with the Ivy League logo. That mark is the lifelong golden key that is supposed to unlock the door to coastal privilege.
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