yeah, but the less rich of the intelligent have better, safer and more widely respected jobs (I have met door to door salesmen that make more than members of parliament). They had opportunities to chose other more lucrative careers, but they didn't.
tl;dr ... a minor objection tough ... it is not at all impossible for 70 percent of drivers to be better than average, you just need the lower 30 percent to (on average) be really bad
you're being either difficult or dense ... nice gardens are nice, people generally agree that clean homes are too, this is a fact and it won't change cause it'd be neat if professionals did that and kept working even tough they would rather have a clean house than a bit more money (that isn't enough to have the house cleaned)
ability in sport = martial prowess / hunting skills / good health in general / good genes in general -- It has always been more or less universally respected.
Jazz players always had subculture specific social status, same with hip-hop pioneers, early rock musicians etc.
USAF wargames discovered against F22s the most effective strategy to use would be tanker denial. Tho' with 4th generation fighters you would still need to outnumber them 6:1 (!)
The astronomer Freeman Dyson was part of the operational analysis team in WWII that worked out it made most sense to only search for and attack refuelling and resupply U-Boats (milkcows)
The Vulcan flight gear famously included hiking boots so the crews could walk to Turkey after completing their mission
And I still think you're wrong. There's a young person centric round here precisely because this is the YC site. But figures of just tech startup founder ages are harder to find.
All I can now talk about is from personal experience. For example I know at least 12 startup founders (meaning low cost, tech centric startups) in Nottingham, working for 3 of those startups. None are/were under 25 when they started their business. The majority of them were over 30. Only 2 had started a previous business before 25. My friend has worked for 3 different tech startups elsewhere. All had founders over 30. Most of these people were married. Some had kids. They still started a business in the tech field.
Perhaps it's because the events and things I go to appeal to people my age, and the events the younger founders go to appeal to a different age. But I doubt it. What I suspect is that older people are probably more likely to go into b2b, the less glamorous startups, because it's easier money and most of these people knew the industries from working in them beforehand. And thus relied on existing contacts and sales forces rather than techcrunch et al. for publicity.
In fact it's almost impossible for an out-of-college/still-in-college founder to enter b2b precisely because they have no experience of that business domain or contacts in it. They can't see the opportunities unless they work in it. The only business they might know is the startup one.
In the end, my point is the idea that older people have no interest in starting tech-centric startups is wrong. It doesn't even make any sense. Do you think older people are scared of tech or something?
"Three and a half years and 70 countries later, I've gotten the equivalent of a Ph.D in general knowledge about the people and places of Planet Earth."
I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but possibly an explanation to the downvoters: a Ph.D. is a specialization; "specialization in general knowledge" doesn't compute.
"Linking to PG's older posts to help you make a point."
The notion that this is bad is baffling. Citation is central to all serious science it also has a place in other forms of (rigorous/serious) thinking. If a scientific article proves something you cite it. If I think you're wrong in a way described by someone else, I'll cite that. This isn't as neat. You prove very little. But you do show what you think about the matter. The aversion against doing this (wich is normal for those who spend a lot of time reading and thinking about for example policy) is strange. It's not an appeal to authority if you agree with it, if it can serve as a description of your position. The fact that pgs essays in particular get cited alot may just be that 1) a lot of people here have read them 2) they're densely argued (you don't expect a lefty to read hayek cause you say he should, a paragraph of a pg essay is more reasonable and 3) they are carefully argued, wich makes it more likely you'll agree with it than more bombastic works or works built on the assumptions and arguments of other people (wich isn't necessarily a bad thing but it does create additional points of failure)
