Why are some people, like me, so averse to unnecessary risks? By 'unnecessary' I mean those that provide no benefits proportional to the risk.

Perhaps some people's apparent foolhardiness is based on our lack of understanding of the benefits they are getting from the activity in question. For instance some readers know that I used to camp alone on public lands. They might imagine risks, while forgetting about all the criminals and auto accidents back in town. And they don't see the benefits of boondocking because they are indoorsmen, not outdoorsmen.

In bicycling I am having trouble adjusting to riding by myself, instead of being surrounded by a highly-visible group. The other side of the coin is that a group can pull you into foolish traps. Perhaps because they are afraid of looking uncool, few cyclists ride with a mirror, use the shoulders of the road, or limit their speed on descents.

In the post-WWII era the ultimate in security, besides dying at a government desk, was thought to come from working at a big company, and snuggling into the corporate welfare state, with its pensions and benefits. After decades of  "right-sizing" and bankruptcies, does anyone still think like that?

For over twenty years, from the early '80s to the early Aughts, an early retiree could be somewhat passive with his nest egg because inflation was low. But in the future we are more likely to face stagflation. This entails an insidious risk for people living on interest or depending on cost-of-living increases that are based on government statistics. Such people might claim to be conservative about their money but, implicitly, they are speculating on the continuation of the low inflation of a bygone era. Inflation might send them to the Slabs to live out their golden years.

Many people think that buying and selling individual stocks is dangerous, despite the different ways of diversifying the risk. I don't just mean owning a sizable number of stocks in different industries. You can also jump out of stocks partially or altogether when too many good years in a row make you think that you are much closer to the end of the business cycle. In addition stock investing actually allows you to profit when things go down--by selling short. That is rather miraculous, actually.

How does this kind of risk compare to an immigrant family running a restaurant, with all their eggs in one basket? And then a franchise restaurant goes in, across the street.

How does it compare to the risk that our farming ancestors survived, a couple generations ago? They had no crop insurance, government bailout programs, etc. They were at the mercy of one drought or insect outbreak. And yet we made it into this world.

There is a huge difference between perceived risk and the real thing. People worry about risk only when it accompanies uncommon or unpopular behavior. They yawn at common risks like turning left out of the grocery store's parking lot or walking down the wedding aisle.

My favorite movie about risk is "Fearless," starring some music by Maurice Jarre, and some acting by Jeff Bridges and Isabella Rossellini. Rossellini's eyes and wide face are reminiscent of, but not as lovely as, those of her mother, Ingrid Bergman. Such are the risks of miscegenation with a Mediterranean.

Actually Jarre only wrote five minutes of original music for this movie, but what an effect it had on the climax! To me movies are a type of opera: typically a poor script and dialogue, which nonetheless provide a situational context, and then instrumental music soaring in the background.