Sorry for the harsh tone up there.

That's alright. You remind me of myself when I was younger and didn't know these things. Your reaction was more or less how I would have reacted to the same thing.

But it just seems unbelievable that there may be a place on earth were smart educated multilingual, lesswrong-level people can't find a job.

If they have bad social skills, a noticeable mental disorder, don't know how to dress for an interview, forget to check the spelling in their resume, or do any number of minor things wrong when it comes to "playing the game" they may have trouble. Nothing is a silver bullet in life, not even a good mind.

The shock caused me to think "well, this person's life could be immensely improved if living elsewhere, somewhere where those rules don't apply, and people are free to come and go."

Yeah, maybe. I haven't really thought about the effects of working constantly, but I bet it would be better if I could take three month vacations. I heard Europeans take very long vacations like that and that their children don't attend school for a full 8 hours a day. What is it like in your country?

I have thought about living somewhere other than the US, for numerous reasons, but I'm not convinced that humans are any less of a mess elsewhere.