My point is that it is possible that no one in the history of their high school, or anyone they have ever known, has attended such a school. The student nor their parent(s) have the mental framework to reason about it.
In theory, that is great. In practice, it does little to level the playing field.
Many capable high school students are not even aware that schools like Stanford exist, and cannot even begin to conceive what acceptance into such a radically different world would even mean. I surely didn't. It is also possible that those students who are aware, and do aspire to receive this aid, have family members who actively sabotage their efforts.
I generally agree. However, one difference is that software does not necessarily have to compete in the physical dimension. This app works equally well wherever I live, whereas a local business is at least unique by location even if the same as others in every other respect.
As a developer, what am I supposed to do? We live in such a saturated world. Everything has been invented and reinvented dozens of times. Every book written and rewritten dozens of times. My (re)invention or (re)write will probably fail, because large companies have a near monopoly on resources. Specializing is equally unlikely to bear originality; how many academics devote their lives to trivial (if any) advances?