> Building new clusters of expertise and economic opportunity is extremely hard, nearly impossible, everybody has been trying to replicate the Bay Area's tech success for decades and even with the housing problems it simply hasn't happened anywhere else.

Sure it did. And Silicon Valley is just the current nexus.

In the mid 1800s, Pittsburgh was the startup technological nexus for chemistry and engineering around steel. In the early 1900s, Detroit was the startup technological nexus for car and machine manufacturing. In the 1960s, Silicon Valley became the startup technological nexus due to Fairchild and the Traitorous Eight.

The "trick" to creating a startup technological nexus is for the price of a startup to be in the range that experienced, generally young (roughly 25-35), mid-level technical professionals can fund.