Taxes were just an example. My issue is when you say:
Life will present you with many different wagers with positive expectations
and then you give the example of a startup. The problem is that you make it sound as if it's always easy to identify the wagers with positive expectation. Of course if you pick enough wagers with positive expectation you will come out ahead, but other than for chance games you simply don't know the expected value of your gamble. The closest you can get is by looking at past returns for certain well-known investments and hope that the future returns will be similar. For most "wagers" there isn't enough data.
Life will present you with many different wagers with positive expectations
and then you give the example of a startup. The problem is that you make it sound as if it's always easy to identify the wagers with positive expectation. Of course if you pick enough wagers with positive expectation you will come out ahead, but other than for chance games you simply don't know the expected value of your gamble. The closest you can get is by looking at past returns for certain well-known investments and hope that the future returns will be similar. For most "wagers" there isn't enough data.