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>If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that we are all being trained to be docile robots in large institutions that are initiated and controlled by other people who are aware that there is an international class struggle, and they are afraid that we might discover we can do it for ourselves and toss them (and their tax breaks) over.

That is pretty much the theory put forward by John Taylor Gatto in "Underground History of American Education"[1] which is actually a pretty interesting book, even if I am not sure I buy everything he talks about.

Oh and unless he faked them, there are too many references from speeches from famous people to just completely ignore him. Which is always the interesting point...

[1] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

If I were both flip and a conspiracy theorist, I would say:

"The first thing we do is kill all the economists and professional educators"

I ... was always struck by how economic development discussions were ONLY focused on how to get a large employer to move to town

My thoughts exactly. I see as a politically expedient way to bring local job growth. The city of Portland has spent a lot of time and money, plus a few million kicked in by the state of Oregon, to lure Danish wind-turbine maker Vestas into building their North American headquarters there. As a taxpayer, I'm never sure if we get a good long term ROI on such deals. I think I'd feel better about it if they put that much money into bolstering the state's middling engineering and science university program education or fostering tech incubators.

"Corvallis was once a hotbed for tech start-ups"

Is that true or is it newspaper hyperbole? I graduated from OSU (in Corvallis), but campus life tends to be insular. I know there were some, but "hotbed" seems over the top.

Entrepreneurship isn't the cure-all pill, good Ideas are hard to come by, even if you are looking for them continuously. Second Large Businesses have huge efficiency advantage due to their scale.

While HN would seem extremely pro - entrepreneurship, in reality, starting your business is not always the smartest move, not from just personal perspective but from perspective of a nation as well. Sure you want Larry Page and Sergey Brin to create Google but before that they went to Stanford for Ph.D. in CS. Entrepreneurship just for sake of it and without any good idea is no better than playing stock market with different strategies.

     If 15% of the unemployed engineers in Corvallis could start companies that hired 5 full timers, they would (probably) have a booming economy all over again. Shit, maybe we could start exporting to China (I think they value entrepeneurship and industrialization there...).

You highly overestimate success rate, also what would they sell? What if they compete with each other and end up cannibalizing the market share between each other. That would at most create re-distribution of wealth and not generation.

The only way to generate income is via means which are non zero sum games [at least non zero sum within that nation].

I don't think ANYTHING is "cure all pill", nor did I say so. I DO think that local economic development should try to foster local entrepeneurship.

(I don't mean to be rude, but I think you are criticizing my argument unfairly and unthoughtfully: I never implied all would be roses if you follow my simple plan. You never cite why my success rate is overestimated, though it may be. Your examples are all so extreme as to be non-representative or strawmen.)

While starting a business is both risky and difficult, I think it might be easier with an overall culture that supports it and trains its young people in necessary skills and attitudes (and we don't).

What would they sell? Same things everybody sells -- cat furniture, machine tools, jelly, organic food, printers, cars etc. One doesn't actually need to invent stuff to make it and sell it (for example. ... China)

Did I suggest that they try to sell stuff without researching what a market might need or absorb? (... "playing stock market with different strategies") -- don't accuse me of foolish statements I don't make in order to buttress your non-argument.

How do we address competition? Export, export, export. Is that not obvious? I took it for granted when I wrote the post, sorry if it wasn't. Perhaps competition might be a problem if every single locale in the US did this, but I am always surprised that none seem to be trying; if I were the city council of Corvallis I would be thinking: to hell with the rest of the US, lets sell them stuff they can't make for themselves.

Re skill like Sergey and Larry -- again, it seems obvious that you need a lot of smart people, and that a town like Corvallis has them -- the woman in the article had plenty of education to start something, or work for a local entrepeneur coding the next big social media thing (hehe -- not a good idea really,...)

The Every Child Left Behind program suggests that it's not a theory.

Placing an emphasis on standardized testing is symptomatic of exactly that -- train the intellect and imagination out of the populace... they're easier to control then.

Teachers are rewarded not for what they teach their students, but rather how well their students do on the standardized tests. So now not only are we forcing everyone to abide by the lowest common denominator, we're penalizing teachers who try to do their job, and rewarding the ones that game the system by teaching their students how to take the standardized test.