That last thing you stated is what I consider to be the ultimate check in capitalism, the thing that makes the system work. You can't set up a corrupt entity th

That last thing you stated is what I consider to be the ultimate check in capitalism, the thing that makes the system work. You can't set up a corrupt entity that lasts beyond a point, because things evolve too quickly. Also, along the lines of 2 and 3, I think that's what explains why young people tend to have such uncommon successes of such magnitude. It's not because of drive per se: people of all ages have drive. But it's because the fact that there's such an imbalance in the system that makes people move forward. I had an epiphany recently that, next to yours, seems pretty stupid and shallow, but it's an epiphany that moved me nonetheless. It was the realization that, despite all the stuff that I'd tried to do, all the stuff I thought I could do, there were still some pretty basic social things I would be incapable of, if I kept along the route I was going. And I didn't like that. So I've started working out, eating more healthily, trying to normalize a bit in preparation for college. And what I've found is that while I'm doing that stuff, I find getting work done to be far easier, too. The two go hand-in-hand. And it's at young ages that trying to show off in shallow ways really stays a priority. It's like the article about Zuckerberg that was on here a week ago. When he was in high school, he wasn't a typical coder: he was an active fencer in the top levels of the USFA, and he was in quite a few social clubs, too. This isn't a case of somebody who's a brilliant coder going off and writing code. That doesn't happen often at all, not even when you look at success stories in Silicon Valley. Rather, he was a very bright person who dabbled in a lot of things, who had an idea and who did whatever he could to bring that idea to fruition. I think the part of that story that fascinated me the most was the part describing how he began Facebook because his girlfriend snubbed him. What an absolutely honest start to a site: something about that story felt absolutely real to me.