> Taxes should not be used to discourage productive activity.
We should be taxing...use of undeveloped land.
Aren't many (most?) uses of undeveloped land productive? About 100 years ago, someone built the house I'm sitting in. That was a productive activity to transform the use of that land for housing, IMO.
Inter-city mail should be by rail, which is far more environmental and much less costly. The only reason highways appear to be "cheaper" is the real costs are paid by other people (passenger cars).
Don't see many Ferrari's, but I can tell you a Prius driver is almost certainly an asshole. They are either Top Gear driving or Hypermiling, either way its at least a nuisance and sometimes a menace.
from my anecdotal experience, it seems like the brand of car that assholes drive is determined mainly by the median income of the locale. in poor areas, assholes drive shitty old hondas. in rich areas, they drive bmws and mercedes. in california, you are quite right; they drive priuses.
I'm saying that there are assholes everywhere and they drive the car they can afford. the California part is kind of a joke, but also somewhat true in my experience.
People who achieve success were often initially derided as delusional, overconfident, etc. Overconfidence, in other words, gave them the impetus to try, and it's amazing how trying gets results in achieving the impossible.
On the other side, I see time after time competent people giving up at the very first (and often trivial) obstacle.
> We may also need to punish overconfident behavior more than we do
This smacks more of a desire to tear down people one is envious of than a recipe for improving society.
Wheeler Dealers is another good one. It's been on for decades and Ant Antstead does some incredibly engaging and informative work despite the fast pace of the show.
Which was such a shame, since the guys definitely had great technical skills & I really wanted to like the show but couldn't get past the screaming. I'm not really into choppers, but am into antique bikes (currently mounting a sidecar on a 73 HD), so it should have been right up my alley.
"Rowling has lived a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on state benefits to being the world's first billionaire author."
Neither of them "founded a start-up" while living below the poverty line. Rowling wrote a book in her spare time that eventually got popular. She wasn't putting any money or asking of anyone else's money to fund her book.
Oprah followed the more usual path of "get a job, get promoted, rinse repeat" until she was a household name before she started her own company. Per the article you yourself linked, she was co-anchoring the local evening news at 19. That isn't the same thing as taking a risk on a start-up.
Writing a book while on welfare is certainly a startup. She didn't self-publish the book. The publisher provided the funding to edit, print, market, and distribute the book (which is not trivial money). Rowling pitched the book to several publishers before one decided to fund it.
Oprah bootstrapped herself out of poverty to become a media billionaire. You might say she took the long way by routing through various jobs to get the money, but she still came from poverty, founded companies, and became a billionaire.
Both Rowling nor Winfrey took routes to financial success that are more open to poor people than starting a startup is, but it's true that in 1998, 23 years into her career, when Winfrey was already world-famous, she co-founded Oxygen Media, which was eventually acquired by NBC for almost an Instagram. So I don't think that fulfills the stated goal of "a startup that exited successfully(IPO or Acquisition) by now and that the founder(s) were living below poverty line or on social welfare".
