Yes these kind of discussions are often useless to me because they ignore the things in life we don't choose. They're written as if someone has complete agency

Yes these kind of discussions are often useless to me because they ignore the things in life we don't choose. They're written as if someone has complete agency and is just choosing between easier and less reward versus harder and more reward. For me at least the real difficulty is dealing with broken systems and all that's needed of you from them, when rejecting the system can mean complete failure of the worst kind. People don't let others steal their time because they're weak, it's because the system is so broken. It's not so much "do I put this effort into building a ship and charting new territory" it's "do I chart this ship into pirate-infested waters when then outcome could mean death, and shipbuilders are defrauding people about the safety of materials?" The correct analogy in contemporary society often isnt builders or explorers, it's refugees. Yes I'm cynical. I wish I weren't.