As covered elsewhere, most of the team is remote. But they still get SV salaries because great people get those salaries no matter where they are.
It's much harder if you want to be remote, and very hard if you want to live in a country where no company pays SV salaries.
A different company was in a different country than Omaha and the naive cost of living was higher, but the cost of living, after adjusting for taxes, was actually very similar.
I hope that gives enough information. I really enjoy living in high cost of living areas so that's where I ended up, but I did have the choice to live somewhere cheaper.
I propose that not so good techies may get more in SV but paid averagely elsewhere?
If you understand great to mean merely competent, then I think you're abusing the meaning of "great".
If it helps you unbunch your undies on this topic, consider that "great" in the original meaning was something like "world class". There's no shame in not being one of the top people in the world.