ajkessler

We have states that have no personal income tax. Not surprisingly, these states are doing fine because they raise revenue other ways.

You're making a huge assumption here that the way someone's mind works is fixed and unalterable. I don't believe this. I think, and have some personal experience here, that you can change the way you think about things, the way you approach things, etc. And you can certainly develop the way successful people look at the world.

I actually think the banana metaphor is excellent: a certain technique may not work for person A, who thinks about the world in A way. But, that person can work to change their mind, to ripen, and eventually see the world close to the way that person B does.

As SoftwareMaven explains below, many schizophrenics experience visual hallucinations in addition to aural hallucinations, but this doesn't seem like a huge stumbling block.

Bigger, I think, is the paranoia aspect. If you really, truly believe the plants in and outside your house are vampires who are waiting to kill you (true story, unfortunately) I can't imagine you're going to put too much faith into your wristband.

Some good points, but I've found this one to be wildly untrue. Almost universally, I've found really successful people want to help other people become really successful. Like his other points, you'll have to initiate and ask for their help, but I've never met anyone successful who isn't willing to give to just about anyone.

You're point is valid, though not exactly contrarian. The decline of point and shoots became pretty obvious when the iphone 3g was released. I'm sure this is why every manufacturer has been diversifying their lineups away from point and shoots over the last 5 years. Sony released a full SLR lineup, including lenses. Olympus has been producing very high quality mirrorless bodies (not exactly point and shoots) for a few years now. Even Fujifilm has followed suit. Nikon and Canon, who probably generate a lot of revenue from p&s sales, have been widely diversified for decades.

I think this would be near impossible to test for though. So many factors affect crime rates across difference societies, and different societies experience wildly different types of income disparity. Intuitively, I imagine places with smaller net income disparity but larger real income disparity (ie a city where everyone is relatively poor but some are destitute) have much more crime than places with larger net income disparity but smaller real income disparity (ie a city where everyone is relatively wealthy, but a few are unbelievably rich).