Competitors punch you in the jaw, but investors have you by the balls. - Paul Graham

Automatically disbelieving authorities isn't independent-mindedness. It's just conformism with the sign bit flipped.

Another reason people don't work on big projects is, ironically, fear of wasting time. What if they fail? Then all the time they spent on it will be wasted. (In fact it probably won't be, because work on hard projects almost always leads somewhere.)

Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I’ve read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks.