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Universal health care is important, necessary, cheaper than our current system, and I support it. But it's a completely orthogonal concern to the state of the tech economy.

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I see an argument in this thread for laissez faire capitalism; its political ramifications are entirely relevant to the state of universal health care in the United States. The economy is interconnected -- the mathematical concept of orthogonality is rarely appropriate when describing broad economic complexities. But perhaps you should simply suggest that a health care discussion here is off-topic?

Culture might be a link between risk taking venture capitalists and less publicly financed social security. However I do not think there is an economic lock that forces a society to be either or. I can easily imagine a society that provides both a good safety net and where capitalists are willing to invest and innovate.

I guess what is missing is the right mentality and attitude, so like, our cultures have not evolved to that level yet.

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