When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.

Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.

Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.

We should ban banks from risk-taking because society is going to pay the price.

An elephant is vastly more efficient, metabolically, than a mouse. It's the same for a megacity as opposed to a village. But an elephant can break a leg very easily, whereas you can toss a mouse out of a window and it'll be fine. Size makes you fragile.

What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats.

Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.