Everything in this article is wrong.

The degree to which a person can afford to independent-minded depends on his intelligent and knowledge. For average ignorant moron to be independent-minded is disastrous since he no basis for independent thinking. All his conclusions will be wrong and harmful to society.

Freedom completely depends on social pressure to keep average people in line. For example, freedom of speech depends on this being a convention since the average person is too stupid to understand the principle behind it. The West lost free speech when it lost its conventions in the stupid 1960s.

In an ideal society, intelligence would be developed as much as possible in school. And then those few who manage to gain fully developed intelligence would be encouraged to think independently, while learning from history that the masses must be socially kept in tight conventional boundaries. Some of these intelligent people should become religious leaders to help keep the moronic masses in line.

The opposite of this approach is Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" where the moronic masses are "empowered" and encouraged to aggressively support new ideas. There is no surer way to destroy a society.

And by the way, the Silicon Valley scum aren't so much independent-minded as sociopathic (a third category).