Young people today cannot build a good carefree life for themselves.
I had an uncle who was very successful in the printing business in nyc after ww2. he lived very well traveling the world driving caddy's etc. what I learned from my father after my uncle died was that his business never generated one million in sales revenue.
I have a multimillion dollar business and I cannot do as he did economically. I am 75 and still run my business.
being 25 or 30 today as far as I am concerned means that the greater majority of our population will never build a carefree life which I have finally attained only in recent years.

In the mid 1970's I got the idea to design and build miniature breathing tube sets for newborns. Up until that time, there were only large tube sets for adults. Newborns needed universal tube sets which would fit onto all the respirators which the hospitals owned (to reduce connection errors). They also needed single use items to prevent cross contamination. In addition, the tube sets needed to be heated to prevent internal condensation and the danger of accidental drowning of the patients.

So I designed the product, and started selling to the hospitals very successfully.

Today, there is the FDA which prevents any sales of medical products until THEY approve them. We would never have had the money to go through their approval process and delays if we had tried to do the same thing today.

I gave up being in the medical business after we sold that business.

The United States of America could not be built today. There are not enough intelligent minds and willing backs to form such a unique concept based on the worth of freedom and the value of the individuals.

Nuclear power plants.

Independent Banks.

Small businesses.

Healthcare insurers.

I suspect if personal cars had not existed since 100 years ago, it would be impossible to introduce them today.

Anyone building a new business on a shoestring. Someone willing to make up lack of funds with hard work . With taxes, fees, and overhead today -- impossible. Ever notice a lack of starting retail stores? Sure most people are switching to buying on line. But That doesn't allow you to pick up the prodect, to feel its quality along with a person who can explain its features and show how to work them. Department stores and even big box stores are disappearing, following the death of Mom and Pop. You might point this out as progress. It is. Negative progress.

America will be like the end of Rome one day where the people were left living among the ruins of a culture, businesses, architecture that they could not comprehend let alone repair let alone build.

I like Trump's subtract two regulations in order to add one rule.
But remember, folks that a POTUS Dino Allosaurus Esq. would have regulators subtract three to add one.
I thought of subtracting more but decided that would just leave us stuck with the all the regulations we now have.
Control freak bureaucrats can only take so much for reasonable corrections.

Hurst Castle definitely couldn't be built today! They have all those fun secret passages and doors that don't go anywhere! (to confuse the ghosts!) So that would be regulated out!

I live in England... I'm sure there are plenty of old buildings here that couldn't be built today. But they seem to have a hard time condeming some old buildings that are falling apart... Oddly, a lot of the older buildings are WAY better built than the newer ones. That's probably true in America too! especially with mass housing.

How about a swimming pool with a diving board - or (gasp) a high dive.

Mostly, it depends on the "spirit" of the people, on the "sense" of a culture. Rand alluded to it in The Fountainhead. She would not, of course, endorse the Hegelian concept of the Zeitgeist, but it does describe in broad brushstrokes why some societies or cultures are more vibrant or creative and free than others.

I live in Texas. Politically, it is a lot like "Taxachusetts." But I moved here to Austin because I was impressed with the entrepreneurship on the street.

Enterprise flows into the channels that carry it. In ancient Rome, "enterprise" was conquering and looting Greek cities. Successful businessmen turned their enterprises over to their slaves and freedmen and retired to the countryside to live as farmers. (See The Invention of Enterprise reviewed here: https://mises.org/library/review-inve... ) Railroads wanted regulation on the eve of the invention of automobile carriers (trucks). Trucking was cartelized as air freight was developed in the 1930s. Silicon Valley was created by people who worked in an almost completely unregulated sector, computers. No government laws defined what a computer was or who could program one.

Today, entrepreneurs compete for space launch -- in a regulated market. The regulations per se are only a factor. They can be a big factor, but not the determinant.

You have as much opportunity as you want.

16" naval guns

Life magazine in 1946 ran a short article about the "ipsiphone", which we would now call an answering machine. This was even before mag tape replaced mag wire.
Hearst Castle is a beautiful site, and it has a magnificent collection of art and antiques, but I find it hard to take architecturally. Rand pretty clearly modeled Gail Wynand on Hearst, but Wynand has better taste in homes.

I understand the question and get the point, but I come up blank. For one thing, Ayn Rand condemned the Hearst Castle with every page of The Fountainhead and about half of Atlas Shrugged. The estate did not much for Hearst and was meant only impress others. By contrast, Warren Buffett is famous for his middle class home. Even Bill Gates' home is not more than is appropriate for him, given who he is.

I thought of the Empire State Building, the Hoover Dam, Kennedy Space Center, ... it was not so much what was accomplished, great though they were, as what was not done.

It was not so much "taxes and regulations" as the worldview that created them. That worldview caused world wars, collectivist mass movements, pseudo-science and mysticism.

We could have had a colony on the Moon by 1950. We almost had the Internet on the eve of World War One. Television had been an experiment in the 1880s. I have a Scientific American from about 1954 with an ad on the back page from Bell Labs for an answering machine -- but AT&T held a monopoly ...

The Internet, in particular, is an example of what can be done despite taxes and regulations. The first BBSes were the result of (1) personal computers and (2) the Hayes Smartmodem. They were beyond taxes and regulations, not that AT&T did not try. When I lived in Lansing, we fought Michigan Bell and won when they tried to get legislation for the Public Utilities Commission to regulate "information services" and "databases." The future happened quickly.