[vessenes]

Postage stamps are a surprisingly deep topic, overlapping with money, collectibility and bank notes. I’m not a postage stamp enthusiast myself, but it’s one of those “the universe is surprisingly detailed” type topics.

Your optimism on humans is appreciated, although arguably not backed up by history: it seems to me like most places times and economic systems turn out a similar percentage of knowledge explorers: ask yourself what percentage of the landed gentry in the UK did this, for instance, and what percent just leisured away. I propose with no data the numbers are largely invariant; what a society or economic systems does change is the ability of the x% to make progress and impact/implement.

[kubb]

I feel like 98% were fox hunting, gambling and whatnot, but the 2% gave us William Wilberforce, Charles Darwin and Lord Byron. If the number of idlers increases so will the number of productive ones.

[vessenes]

Yeah that’s my rough ratio too. Think Athens long ago: probably like max 5% in an ideal (well for male non slaves) society.

[kubb]

It’s kinda like startup math. Most will fail but the few successes will offset the failures.