"The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap,"
What? Just, what? I have no idea where you get this limited universe of options from. You are aware of the enormous industry dedicated to funding entrepreneurs that aren't this program, right? And how you leap from that to straight-out linear projection of funding all high school students I have no idea, since I do not see anywhere where this is presented as the only possible path (or even the only desirable path), a further strawman you seem to have simply added to the pile. You seem to be just making things up wholesale, then getting upset with those things.
Is it necessary to fund all persons 15-19 - be they high school students or "precocious" young people (following Thiel's "logic") who dropped out before they were eligible for college? Of course not, but there is a five order of magnitude gap between Thiel's $2,000,000 and the $400,000,000,000 it would take to apply it to the four million college students under the age of 20. [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98]
The industry you mention relies on an educational process - i.e. the method employed by higher education. Your criticism is bereft of examples of such programs which have demonstrated results - never mind examples which scale.
With the Von Mises Institute a front nine away. I run into libertarian theories quite frequently. Usually it is more intellectually rigorous.
Comments
"The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap,"
What? Just, what? I have no idea where you get this limited universe of options from. You are aware of the enormous industry dedicated to funding entrepreneurs that aren't this program, right? And how you leap from that to straight-out linear projection of funding all high school students I have no idea, since I do not see anywhere where this is presented as the only possible path (or even the only desirable path), a further strawman you seem to have simply added to the pile. You seem to be just making things up wholesale, then getting upset with those things.
Is it necessary to fund all persons 15-19 - be they high school students or "precocious" young people (following Thiel's "logic") who dropped out before they were eligible for college? Of course not, but there is a five order of magnitude gap between Thiel's $2,000,000 and the $400,000,000,000 it would take to apply it to the four million college students under the age of 20. [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98]
The industry you mention relies on an educational process - i.e. the method employed by higher education. Your criticism is bereft of examples of such programs which have demonstrated results - never mind examples which scale.
With the Von Mises Institute a front nine away. I run into libertarian theories quite frequently. Usually it is more intellectually rigorous.