As for lowering of numbers of skilled workers there are many reasons I would think. USA was once major magnet because the rest of the world was so underdeveloped. This has changed. Then more restrictive environment means that to get in, you have to do more or get there illegally - such conditions are putting skilled ones off naturally as it increases risk without increasing of pay off. But there are other reasons too. US society is better known to people now and not from better side. If decision to immigrate is based on information and calculation instead of myths and herd instincts, then there is ever less incentive: US society is more and more seen in perspective of great divide between have and havenots, there are riots, militarized police seems to be shooting people at random and people are shooting other people, tensions in society seem to be fixed so people in say Fergusson buy guns instead of trying to address the problems, add to this war on drugs, massive prison population and what is important for people like me who would immigrate with family: basic social safety nets are somewhat lacking. There is also another aspect - US is not seen as a good country anymore or not by majority. Take Germany - conquered by (among others) US military power and turned into ashes in a process yet people loved US after a while. This has stopped and now they are more critical but there are plenty of places in the world where people see US as only good to get some goodies AND a great danger to own society too. I do not know how many people use such arguments not to migrate to US but I would imagine the number became significant of late.
Plus today there are more jobs which you can do from home. You can do some of those jobs from home - income may be lower but risk is lower too.
As for your
If this site had any influence on general population anywhere we would see libertarian economic policy at least in US, energy needs covered by 4th generation of nuclear reactors and NSA and religion banned from the system their proponents sent to re-education camps in Syberia. maybe even some good examples could have been found of such geek based society but we would not know because this is not happening.
That was maybe well intentioned but naive and written in a context of a large continent emptied nicely of local populations by germs and steel tools.
I wonder how robots would handle getting over right angle bend with any meaningful speed and without seriously troubling a transported indihvidual.
Other than that it is a very thoughtful post, thank you.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.