A book I had about US immigration said that the situation you outline actually occurred with the E-2 visa for quite some time. That's why the criteria for the E-2 are so strict now - if the criteria weren't so strict, it'd be the ideal "founders visa" already. Basically the post is proposing creating a lax E-2 (of sorts), which already failed once. (Even though people are throwing around numbers of $500k, etc, for the E-2 - that was certainly not the case even a few years ago.)
Perhaps the most interesting comment over there is on relaxing the criteria for the O-1 visa instead. Perhaps instead of being "incredibly famous" you could just be "well known in your field" instead.. I better keep in the top 100 on Hacker News then ;-)
My mother managed to get an O-1 actually - and she's not even college-educated. She's simply quite well known and regarded in her community (knitting, arts and crafts), and that was that.
The 500k number comes from people confusing the E-2 and the EB-5 I suspect. The EB-5 program gives you a greencard for a 500k$ investment in an disadvantaged area or $1m anywhere else. The money needs to be "at risk".
If there were programs I felt were sufficiently reputable I'd go for it. However, I'd want to quantify the risk. I'd rather not get into a situation where some ski resort gets partially built, goes under and funnily enough its all the immigrants money which disappears into dubious hands.. and the immigrants should just be happy they got their greencard.
Perhaps the most interesting comment over there is on relaxing the criteria for the O-1 visa instead. Perhaps instead of being "incredibly famous" you could just be "well known in your field" instead.. I better keep in the top 100 on Hacker News then ;-)