The quote in this blog post is from Ridley.

Yes, you will be closer to them if you understand them better.

Sorry. Comments seems to be having problems tonight. Upgrading soon.

Exactly. :)

It was famous enough (sorry I can't remember the exact words!). It's like opening a post, "To be or not to be, that is the question." You don't need to quote Shakespeare necessarily; enough people will know.

Yikes, Fixed!

"Slouching Towards Bethlehem."

Making bad judgments and making good judgments and learning from the varying outcomes. :)

Not sure exactly. Franchisees probably sign long-term contracts with the brands, but at some point they surely have an out.

Nice to hear your voice again, Vince. :) I'm not sure crime and poverty rates are the only indication of healthy civil society, but I agree generally the Dutch seem to have a pretty good life, and the Scandinavian socio-econoimc model has for a long time been a point of interest to me.

"both supposedly earn their gargantuan pay through their heroic feats of genius that help legitimize their fortunes" Most entrepreneurs run small businesses -- corner stores, delis, small technology firms, what have you. Even of those that aspire to start world changing tech companies, few survive more than a few years, let alone "earn gargantuan pay." What our culture worships in the entrepreneur is perceived self-reliance and creation of new products and services. The same cannot be said of Wall Street. So, I think they're different. And one is better / healthier.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. It deserves a longer answer, later. For now, I'll say two things. First, my worldview is shaped by my personal experiences, and my personal experiences as an entrepreneur make entrepreneurship a natural prism through which to understand certain ideas. Of course it has its limitations; all frameworks do. But there's a reason athletes uses sports metaphors to talk about non-sports ideas. It's easier to use vocabulary and concepts we know well to talk about concepts we aspire to know well. And I agree that no one framework should be used exclusively. Second, you may be overstating the extent to which "start-up entrepreneurs" is one of the "reigning ideologies of the day." Open up an economics textbook, and you'll find amazingly little about entrepreneurship, even though new venture creation is one of the chief causes of economic growth and prosperity (and almost all real innovation). In terms of cultural attention, Wall Street financiers have long been the sexier examples in stories of titans. (And before that, the industrial barons of Chicago and elsewhere.) Is entrepreneurship trendy now? Yes. But it's a trend long overdue. And hopefully one that will find its place, over the long run, not only as a headline in economics textbooks but as a solid conceptual framework to think about a range of issues.

Ah, well Simmons may be taking risks in terms of business or platform moves (you mentioned podcasts and managing a new web site with a staff of writers), but in terms of style of creative output, I don't find it particularly "risky." He wants more creative variety out of Smith, but as far as I can tell, Simmons doesn't have a lot of creative variety himself. He wants Smith to player a gangster sometime in a movie. I'm not sure what the analogy would be for Simmons' writing, but I don't think he's shown that range himself. The point is, we always talk about actors who have creative range or don't have range, but we don't talk about that standard as much with other types of artists.

I totally agree. I admire Simmons a lot. I'm saying, he does his thing and he does it well, nothing wrong with that. What seems unfair is that he would hold Will Smith to a different standard.

Excellent comment.

Yes, that's the "obvious" reason. I was posing a new, different reason.

Awesome find.

totally agree.

Good question. Will have to think about that. :)

Agreed re: working smart. But it's interesting that Leno and Smith talk about working hard relative to their competitors, rather than as an ethic in and of itself.

Depends on the person. USA still offers tremendous opportunity in so many fields. Obviously, for some, there's more opportunity abroad...and I agree Santiago is a great place to go!

Agreed re: Sheen.

I've read the critiques, and I disagree with them.

Excellent way of putting it, Dave. Makes sense.

Lifestyle can mean different things to different people, but probably small business entrepreneurship.