Many people would probably agree with you but my personal unsubstantiated opinion is that both can be bought. Want good schools? Hire good teachers (and bring in a class of workers who care about their kids' educations and help their children succeed). Want culture? Hire musicians, artists, etc. Other natural culture will come by building the right kind of environment (see The Timeless Way of Building) and bringing in a bunch of talented people with cash to spend to generate the kind of environment they want by paying for bands to play, artists to make art, baristas, bartenders, etc.

Re: Olin College, I don't often hear it as often as Stanford probably because of the relative size of the marketing budget, but the software engineers who come out of Olin College are probably not paid so significantly less that a 30-40% reduction in rent wouldn't compensate.

Re: $Billions... Or a couple thousand software engineers organized to invest together.

Re: "You simply cannot build some of those things." Challenge accepted! Er, well, but I'm short about a billion dollars in order to attempt it. Know anybody who can help with that?