I'm not sure that lack of time to daydream is an east-coast/west-coast thing. Amherst is also on the east coast, and it (and I've heard many of the other "little Ivy" liberal arts colleges) encourages you to take a reasonable, balanced courseload and have time for things outside of school. I would say (based on who my friends are at Google) that Amherst and Brown are culturally much closer to Stanford than to MIT, despite being geographically clumped in New England.
The lack of a supportive environment for startups, and consequent lack of risk-taking, is an east-coast/west-coast thing. There aren't very many Amherst entrepreneurs. Most of my classmates did the minimum-wage "life experience" thing before finally going to law school when they wanted to settle down. It's like MIT encourages you to work really hard, Stanford encourages you to find your passion and then work really hard, and Amherst just encourages you to find your passion.