Eventually I did that, but it took a lot of twists and turns, and there were a year or two there where I was living with no money at all - no home, no car, no nothing. I was living in somebody's garage in Los Angeles at that point - for a year.
Furthermore, America suffers not only from a lack of standards, but also not infrequently from a confusion or an inversion of standards.
I'm not someone who dwells upon past events, taking the view that life is too short.