Globalization has favored migration, and this is built in to your background: ergo, "these people are not smart and don't work hard like I did...so I should exi

Globalization has favored migration, and this is built in to your background: ergo, "these people are not smart and don't work hard like I did...so I should exit" is your first inclination. It's a very common sentiment through America that somewhere else can be escaped to, that there's a new frontier to homestead. But... I have been through California's most competitive schools. The ones in which everyone grubbed for grades, and therefore pursued exactly what you are romanticizing. Yeah, you get some education, but the course material mattered very little. All the serious challenges that have left an impression decades on were presented by other life events like kids who commit suicide(an occurrence that is depressingly frequent at those competitive schools). I do not think of myself as a winner, but a survivor. The moments where genuine flourishing took place are likewise things that were not really about the school system or what my parents did, but the whole confluence of factors. California - as a society - is, in fact, facing and working through those challenges of how to make its society work without relying on exit, because exit simply means others get dumped on. Making it a place worth living in is not about working hard, or voting in the right government, but about answering all the ethical questions involved in creating that society with clarity and intellectual honesty, one day and one incident at a time. The parlor tricks necessary to earn a tech salary and then uproot oneself are simple stuff in comparison. And Asia is not gaining in terms of competitiveness: it's gotten wealthier and older too, and it has started having the same kinds of issues, of younger Japanese going "hikkikomori" or Chinese workers "lying flat".