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People love to take this story apart. I always took the message as “stop when you have enough”. It’s a lesson about contentment. I have enough, and I turned my
by nicbou 4y ago
People love to take this story apart. I always took the message as “stop when you have enough”. It’s a lesson about contentment.
I have enough, and I turned my entrepreneurial spirit towards public good instead of revenue. I take days off when it’s sunny, and reintroduced play into my work. I am back to Paul Graham’s “do things that don’t scale”.
I am dismayed by the amount of greed among people far wealthier than me. Their quest to grow a number beyond rational purposes causes them and a lot of people around them immense grief. We would all benefit if they worked on other goals.
- anonu 4y agoMaybe it's not money that motivates some people? Money is just a marker of success in this game. The real achievement might be building a business or growing a product or out competing a competitor.
- nicbou 4y agoMoney might just become a convenient metric, because it can be traded for whatever your other metrics are later. In any case, the pursuit of money beyond meeting your own needs is more often than not destructive. I find that this story is a good reminder that you can have a financial goal beyond which you enter maintenance mode and focus on other things.
- AndrewKemendo 4y agoMoney is the metric for power At the highest levels it’s about power and control and shaping the world to what you want it to be It’s all neurotic anxiety about not having the ability to do whatever you want unimpeded forever and generating “generational wealth” so that literally your kids kids kids will be ensured that they don’t have to go to public school Go live around billionaires a while and it’s blatantly obvious that everything is just about calming fears and anxieties but with a never ending desire to get more on behalf of whatever in group they relate.
- stcroixx 4y agoOr causing a lot of people immense grief.
- thathndude 4y agoWhen folks are surveyed about what level of wealth would make them 10/10 happy, without variation, every wealth bracket reports back “double.” It’s a sickness.
- s1mplicissimus 4y agocitation needed?
- nicbou 4y agoWell it really depends on what you have to sacrifice for it. I decided that at 1.5x the median income, I'd stop caring. I stopped caring much sooner.
- ijidak 4y agoCouldn't agree more. 'But those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have stabbed themselves all over with many pains'
- dangwhy 4y agoproblem is that its really hard to know what exactly is enough. Old age is a bitch and full of uncertainty. What if you need in house nursing care for last 20 yrs of ur life. Only way to know when is enough is if you make a pact with yourself that you;d end your life when it becomes miserable and you are no longer independent.
- andrei_says_ 4y agoLooking at greed as a disease / mental health issue changed my outlook. Absence of content is exhausting. It is happening to them. The problem is that our culture also suffers from this disorder and glorifies the disease.