Switzerland is the perfect place where you have volatility at a municipal level that nothing up top - small units competing with each other.

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.

Writing is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.

Being an entrepreneur is an existential, not just a financial thing.

Is the economy something organic or is it something engineered? I think it's closer to the organic. You harm it by artificially suppressing volatility in it.

Character is proportionate to N, the number of consecutive failures without being discouraged, or equivalently, the number of successive rejections without being intimidated.

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.