| Perhaps "loss aversion" is important to me: I'm not a spherically rational Homo economicus. Our society mostly works because of our non-monetary rewards, not because of monetary incentives. My teaching and nursing friends work for their own satisfaction, and more money is not a high priority to them. I am not particularly motivated by money. I suspect you are a businessperson that believes money is strongly motivating? I chased financial success for 15 years when I started from $0: however I now hope I have enough and I hope it won't be unfairly taken from me. Yes, money was a big incentive then (and my personal costs have been very high), but now I have other goals. I suspect I psychologically find high marginal taxation demotivating (48% if we include GST). Maybe because I have too many acquaintances and family sucking at the government tit. I see where government money goes because I have a wide variety of acquaintances including retirees, elderly, unhealthy, and unemployed. Yeah, I know they are not living the high life (well, maybe my drug-abusing anti-social acquaintances think they are). > No, I'm talking about selling all or part of the business Which requires an intense amount of work, and sometimes a significant loss, and usually requires selling 100%... Why should I sell at 4x earnings when I can hold on to the business - even if I don't want it? Taxation has too much influence on my investments because rebalancing across other investments has too high a cost/risk. I guess I'm an idealist. I believe in startups, and I believe they help all New Zealanders. But the incentives of our taxation system mean that founding a startup is foolish: I don't recommend to anyone that they should be a founder (even though I have won the gamble). The unrecoverable costs of anything but spectacular success are too high. The non-monetary rewards are poor in my experience. The expected median return for a startup founder is about $0. Our social systems and taxation systems need to encourage business inception and growth so that all of NZ can be better off. Thank you for your questions. It is always good to be asked why! |