If you offer millions of dollars to anyone with a far fetched idea and a prototype, everyone will have a far fetched idea and a prototype, and you'll need some way to filter millions of applicants down to the 30k you can afford to give the money. It would be extremely competitive, just like VC is now, and picking the winners smartly/fairly would be just as difficult.
This doesn't mean that having some public subsidies for entrepreneurs is necessarily a bad idea, but it's not going to be a dramatic cure-all like you describe. The students in the top < 1% that would be getting funded from this system could most likely already raise that money from private investors. I think something like UBI would have a far wider and more equitable impact.
>It would be extremely competitive, just like VC is now, and picking the winners smartly/fairly would be just as difficult.
Except that it would likely become corrupted like much of government contracting already is. At least VC are tossing their own money and don't have the same perverse incentive for corruption when you have government employees handing out bids to taxpayer money.
I don’t know. According to personal experience and to Chamath and Peter Thiel, a lot of great people doing great things can’t raise anything beyond friends and family.
Yeah, I don't dispute that. I just don't know that your plan would help with that much beyond simply injecting more money into the system. Instead of money going to the top < 1% of founders who figure out how to effectively pitch investors, it would go to the top < 1% who figure out how to effectively pitch a government agency. Determining who is and isn't "great" is extremely difficult and I don't see any reason why the government would be any better at it than investors are currently, so you'll still have truly great people getting passed over and others who don't deserve it getting the money.
This doesn't mean that having some public subsidies for entrepreneurs is necessarily a bad idea, but it's not going to be a dramatic cure-all like you describe. The students in the top < 1% that would be getting funded from this system could most likely already raise that money from private investors. I think something like UBI would have a far wider and more equitable impact.