It's not just that you have a welfare state to fall back on, it's also that a lot of ordinary jobs are quite boring. There's a huge government sector where you

It's not just that you have a welfare state to fall back on, it's also that a lot of ordinary jobs are quite boring. There's a huge government sector where you can play with red tape, and then there's the well-known corporations where you can do the same. Or you can scrape by in a small business like a restaurant or hairdresser. So why not give it a go? As for the Silicon Valley, the VCs seem to be concentrated in London AFAICT.