> get it - and find it's horrible. What do you do then? There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it. Except

> get it - and find it's horrible. What do you do then? There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it. Except, here's a situation that doubles up the tragedy. You start off your youth, determined that the lack of money is what's stopping you from doing things that you really care about - things you would do in leisure. Pursuits of pleasure - art, music, altruism, atavistic quests (become a farmer?) and even hedonism. But the sacrifice at the altar isn't entirely possible for everyone - the process demands that you survive a psychosis of sleeplessness, mixed with a caffeine dehydration, in an air-conditioned room, filled with fluorescent light with no hint of a dawn. And then there's the superficial solidarity of everyone around you surviving this, without even a hint of complaints (furiously "ducking" as they call it). Breaking out of it demands failure. And failure is hard to swallow for the best of the best, who are hit the hardest. Not having dealt with failure for 20 years makes it even harder to face up to failure & quit. Attracting the brightest into the fold will naturally push up the numbers of those who'd rather die than fail.