Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel took a break from gloating about bankrupting Gawker and railing against Washington, D.C.’s metro system this week to share his thoughts about the future with America’s youth, during a conference at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 45-minute event with the PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor—billed as “The American Dream—Globalization, Technology and Progress”—upset some audience members, though not for the reasons one might expect.

“If you are a very talented person, you have a choice: You either go to New York or you go to Silicon Valley,” Thiel said according to the Chicago Tribune's Kim Janssen, perhaps unaware that he was addressing a crowd of Chicagoans. The flyover-state audience did not take kindly to the aspersion. “Who comes to Chicago if first-rate people go to New York or Silicon Valley?” one audience member asked. Thiel backtracked, explaining that the coastal, enlightened metropolises of New York City and San Francisco were merely “extreme versions” of a metaphor he’d been trying to illustrate about technology and globalization, and that while he isn’t sure “exactly what Chicago should be doing right now,” “it's an extremely important question, and it’s the type of question that we don't ask enough.”

Perhaps the more talented denizens of the Second City should consider moving west to pursue a lifestyle as a member of a libertarian island nation, like the one Thiel funded in 2008, or apply for funding from the Thiel Foundation for their own venture. At least then they would live somewhere important.