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Surely almost everyone realises by adulthood that the real answer is that most people just aren't trying to be rich? It's not the actual goal of the vast majori

Surely almost everyone realises by adulthood that the real answer is that most people just aren't trying to be rich? It's not the actual goal of the vast majority of people. If everyone were trying to maximise their own wealth, we would have no nurses, no-one would be a firefighter, no-one would be police, no-one would work in the military, etc etc. Vast swathes of jobs would have unfillable vacancies because everyone would work them for at most a couple of years whilst living out of their car or similar in order to save, then they'd be hustling and trying to start their own business or get a job in finance or whatever. I have a fairly solid academic background, and of my cohort, less than half, maybe even under 25%, went into traditionally well paying fields. Most are more interested in driving academia/science forward or generally on other social goals as long as they have enough to pay for the house and car. You could equally ask why doesn't everyone lift at the gym 10+ hours a week, or run 50 miles, or aim to learn a new recipe every week, or whatever else. Different people have different goals and that's wonderful. Money is just one of many balls that people try to juggle.

jongjong 2y ago
It's true that most people are optimizing for a range of possible outcomes and not actually laser-focused on getting rich. For example, I always had a dual goal of: 1. Gain wealth. 2. Gain knowledge and critical thinking skills. I was trying to get rich, but only in ways which would result in me gaining more knowledge and critical thinking ability on the way. So I was going about it in a very specific way and missing out on many possible paths as a result. It's why: - I completed my university degree instead of dropping out early and becoming a founder. - I chose to get involved in complex open source distributed systems projects instead of building social media apps and add-ons. - I changed companies multiple times, even when I found ones which paid a high salary for little work. There's only so much you can learn at one company in one industry. I wanted to see how software works across different industries. - I avoided cutting corners. In retrospect, I can only speculate that maybe I would have been successful in gaining wealth if I had been laser-focused on that and disregarded self-improvement. Still, I think the article makes a critically important point; it's mostly about luck. In other words; the vast majority of people who were 100% laser-focused on getting rich and couldn't care less about self-improvement also failed to get rich... And these people, those who survived the ordeal, have literally nothing to show for it. They probably blame themselves for their failures and engage in self-loathing because they're not intelligent enough to realize that it's not their fault; it's just probability. Anyway, when it comes to social and sexual relationships; knowledge and critical thinking ability can often get you the same things which money can get you, but better quality. The best people are naturally attracted to knowledge and intellect.
- funklute 2y ago
  > The best people are naturally attracted to knowledge and intellect That is a pretty narrow-minded way of evaluating other people's worth...
  - jongjong 2y ago
    To me curiosity is the most important trait. People who aren't curious seem empty, superficial and over-socialized. They lack a real identity. They seem almost unconscious to me. I know they can grow out of it, I have seen it, but I don't have the time or energy for people at that stage of development.
    - funklute 2y ago
      Perhaps some meaning is getting lost in translation here... If you mean curiosity as in academic achievement, then I think this is a deeply disrespectful way of thinking of other people. If you mean curiosity as in having empathy for the people and world around you, and not being a narcissistic sociopath, then I probably agree with you. But from what you wrote earlier, I get the impression you're talking about the former rather than the latter...
      - jongjong 2y ago
        Not necessarily academic curiosity but curious to learn things and capable of critical thinking. I also think there are many 'educated idiots' so education isn't everything. There are a lot of educated people who are good at repeating complex-sounding catchphrases like parrots when promoted with the right questions; that's not intelligence.
  - swayvil 2y ago
    But the knowledgeable intellectuals seem to like it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
gizmondo 2y ago
> Most are more interested in driving academia/science forward or generally on other social goals as long as they have enough to pay for the house and car. I don't know about you, but my impression is that people who ended up in academia are mostly there because it seemed like the path of least resistance. They were indeed not optimizing for wealth, but optimizing for comfort by not making the scary decision of quitting the track they've been on their whole life.
- kome 2y ago
  Given how hard it is to stay in academia nowadays, I wouldn't say it's the 'path of least resistance.'
  - rpozarickij 2y ago
    People tend to cling to what is familiar even if it causes hardship/suffering. Switching into a new and unfamiliar area often looks harder than doing something you've been already doing.
- beej71 2y ago
  I'm only a single data point, but I always wanted to teach at a university. I just didn't for the first 50 years of my life because the pay outside was so much better. But then I finally made the scary decision to quit the track I'd been on my whole life and started teaching at a university full time. And I've never been happier. What a great, fulfilling job, to see my students run off and start careers in high spirits. I'm not rich, but I have enough money for my modest lifestyle, and you'd have to pay me a VERY large salary (say $2 million per year) to trade my remaining life for some lousy product du jour.
- sausagefeet 2y ago
  > are mostly there because it seemed like the path of least resistance This is true of pretty much every profession. Academics get a lot of heat because there is some silly feud around elitism and common people but the reality is most people in every career are there because it's easy. I'm a software developer by trade, not because I went through hardship to become one but because I happen to really enjoy writing software. I'm just lucky it happens to be lucrative.
mjklin 2y ago
“Some people are so poor, all they have is money.”
- kome 2y ago
  a fool and his time are easily parted...
binary132 2y ago
For the vast majority of human history the obvious answer was “some people are born into money”, not “99.99999999% of the population just don’t care as much about getting rich as those few incredibly wealthy lords who will kill anyone who gets in their way”. :) So many of these answers seem to presume that wealth and success are things that pretty much anyone can just reach out and take if they really wanted to.
- naming_the_user 2y ago
  Yes, but it is not currently the "vast majority of human history". The main issue I think though with discussing things like this on an Internet site is that the world is not homogeneous. In order to have a reasonable discussion we have to exclude obvious edge cases like how there is luck involved in not being born in North Korea.
  - binary132 2y ago
    Do you genuinely believe that we have equality of opportunity even in “first-world” nations when nearly all of the institutional operational access is monopolized by families and other private social networks? The exceptions to the rule seem smaller than the odds of being born in North Korea. Most people do not have equal access to wealth opportunities. So no, it’s not at all “random chance”, unless your idea of “random chance” is “born into the Trump family”. :)
    - naming_the_user 2y ago
      Equality? No, of course not. I don't believe that at all, with equal application of effort/skill it is far easier to "make it" if, for example, you are born in San Francisco to well connected, wealthy parents. I consider this to be self evident and I wouldn't take seriously the opinion of anyone who would claim otherwise. There are also effects _on the individual themselves_ like e.g. it's more likely that a person will be more intelligent if they have good nutrition throughout pregnancy and early childhood. However, not withstanding that, I also don't believe that luck is a barrier to success apart from at the absolute top levels. The analogy I would give is with athletics. You won't take Olympic gold without top tier genetics. But without training you won't even be able to run 10km. And to be "rich" in this world you don't need to be in the Olympics. You just need to be competitive. It really depends on what we are talking about. I can point to many, many examples of people both in my personal life and famous people who I do not know personally who have been successful by any reasonable standard, both groups of which it is trivial to see to those close to them have not merely been lucky.
majikaja 2y ago
The things that are 'socially acceptable' (big houses? boats? art? no multiple spouses) to spend millions of dollars on as an individual are just not appealing to everyone.
JohnFen 2y ago
I think the minority of people who do have the goal of "getting rich" don't understand this. Generally, people tend to assume that their own goals and worldview are roughly shared by most other people.
ifyoubuildit 2y ago
> If everyone were trying to maximise their own wealth, we would have no nurses, no-one would be a firefighter, no-one would be police, no-one would work in the military, etc etc. In a vacuum maybe, but presumably market conditions would adjust to increase pay for these positions until demand was met (or some other innovation would take their place). That's the whole point of markets, is it not? If there is legitimately enough demand for something, it will be supplied if possible. The phrase "vast majority" to me is shorthand for "I have no data but a strong gut feeling about this". As someone who grew up not poor but close enough to it to have a healthy fear of it, focusing on driving science or social goals is admirable, but a bit of a luxury thing.

jongjong 2y ago

It's true that most people are optimizing for a range of possible outcomes and not actually laser-focused on getting rich. For example, I always had a dual goal of: 1. Gain wealth. 2. Gain knowledge and critical thinking skills. I was trying to get rich, but only in ways which would result in me gaining more knowledge and critical thinking ability on the way. So I was going about it in a very specific way and missing out on many possible paths as a result. It's why: - I completed my university degree instead of dropping out early and becoming a founder. - I chose to get involved in complex open source distributed systems projects instead of building social media apps and add-ons. - I changed companies multiple times, even when I found ones which paid a high salary for little work. There's only so much you can learn at one company in one industry. I wanted to see how software works across different industries. - I avoided cutting corners. In retrospect, I can only speculate that maybe I would have been successful in gaining wealth if I had been laser-focused on that and disregarded self-improvement. Still, I think the article makes a critically important point; it's mostly about luck. In other words; the vast majority of people who were 100% laser-focused on getting rich and couldn't care less about self-improvement also failed to get rich... And these people, those who survived the ordeal, have literally nothing to show for it. They probably blame themselves for their failures and engage in self-loathing because they're not intelligent enough to realize that it's not their fault; it's just probability. Anyway, when it comes to social and sexual relationships; knowledge and critical thinking ability can often get you the same things which money can get you, but better quality. The best people are naturally attracted to knowledge and intellect.

funklute 2y ago
> The best people are naturally attracted to knowledge and intellect That is a pretty narrow-minded way of evaluating other people's worth...
- jongjong 2y ago
  To me curiosity is the most important trait. People who aren't curious seem empty, superficial and over-socialized. They lack a real identity. They seem almost unconscious to me. I know they can grow out of it, I have seen it, but I don't have the time or energy for people at that stage of development.
  - funklute 2y ago
    Perhaps some meaning is getting lost in translation here... If you mean curiosity as in academic achievement, then I think this is a deeply disrespectful way of thinking of other people. If you mean curiosity as in having empathy for the people and world around you, and not being a narcissistic sociopath, then I probably agree with you. But from what you wrote earlier, I get the impression you're talking about the former rather than the latter...
    - jongjong 2y ago
      Not necessarily academic curiosity but curious to learn things and capable of critical thinking. I also think there are many 'educated idiots' so education isn't everything. There are a lot of educated people who are good at repeating complex-sounding catchphrases like parrots when promoted with the right questions; that's not intelligence.
- swayvil 2y ago
  But the knowledgeable intellectuals seem to like it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

gizmondo 2y ago

> Most are more interested in driving academia/science forward or generally on other social goals as long as they have enough to pay for the house and car. I don't know about you, but my impression is that people who ended up in academia are mostly there because it seemed like the path of least resistance. They were indeed not optimizing for wealth, but optimizing for comfort by not making the scary decision of quitting the track they've been on their whole life.

kome 2y ago
Given how hard it is to stay in academia nowadays, I wouldn't say it's the 'path of least resistance.'
- rpozarickij 2y ago
  People tend to cling to what is familiar even if it causes hardship/suffering. Switching into a new and unfamiliar area often looks harder than doing something you've been already doing.
beej71 2y ago
I'm only a single data point, but I always wanted to teach at a university. I just didn't for the first 50 years of my life because the pay outside was so much better. But then I finally made the scary decision to quit the track I'd been on my whole life and started teaching at a university full time. And I've never been happier. What a great, fulfilling job, to see my students run off and start careers in high spirits. I'm not rich, but I have enough money for my modest lifestyle, and you'd have to pay me a VERY large salary (say $2 million per year) to trade my remaining life for some lousy product du jour.
sausagefeet 2y ago
> are mostly there because it seemed like the path of least resistance This is true of pretty much every profession. Academics get a lot of heat because there is some silly feud around elitism and common people but the reality is most people in every career are there because it's easy. I'm a software developer by trade, not because I went through hardship to become one but because I happen to really enjoy writing software. I'm just lucky it happens to be lucrative.

mjklin 2y ago

“Some people are so poor, all they have is money.”

kome 2y ago
a fool and his time are easily parted...

binary132 2y ago

For the vast majority of human history the obvious answer was “some people are born into money”, not “99.99999999% of the population just don’t care as much about getting rich as those few incredibly wealthy lords who will kill anyone who gets in their way”. :) So many of these answers seem to presume that wealth and success are things that pretty much anyone can just reach out and take if they really wanted to.

naming_the_user 2y ago
Yes, but it is not currently the "vast majority of human history". The main issue I think though with discussing things like this on an Internet site is that the world is not homogeneous. In order to have a reasonable discussion we have to exclude obvious edge cases like how there is luck involved in not being born in North Korea.
- binary132 2y ago
  Do you genuinely believe that we have equality of opportunity even in “first-world” nations when nearly all of the institutional operational access is monopolized by families and other private social networks? The exceptions to the rule seem smaller than the odds of being born in North Korea. Most people do not have equal access to wealth opportunities. So no, it’s not at all “random chance”, unless your idea of “random chance” is “born into the Trump family”. :)
  - naming_the_user 2y ago
    Equality? No, of course not. I don't believe that at all, with equal application of effort/skill it is far easier to "make it" if, for example, you are born in San Francisco to well connected, wealthy parents. I consider this to be self evident and I wouldn't take seriously the opinion of anyone who would claim otherwise. There are also effects _on the individual themselves_ like e.g. it's more likely that a person will be more intelligent if they have good nutrition throughout pregnancy and early childhood. However, not withstanding that, I also don't believe that luck is a barrier to success apart from at the absolute top levels. The analogy I would give is with athletics. You won't take Olympic gold without top tier genetics. But without training you won't even be able to run 10km. And to be "rich" in this world you don't need to be in the Olympics. You just need to be competitive. It really depends on what we are talking about. I can point to many, many examples of people both in my personal life and famous people who I do not know personally who have been successful by any reasonable standard, both groups of which it is trivial to see to those close to them have not merely been lucky.

majikaja 2y ago

The things that are 'socially acceptable' (big houses? boats? art? no multiple spouses) to spend millions of dollars on as an individual are just not appealing to everyone.

JohnFen 2y ago

I think the minority of people who do have the goal of "getting rich" don't understand this. Generally, people tend to assume that their own goals and worldview are roughly shared by most other people.

ifyoubuildit 2y ago

> If everyone were trying to maximise their own wealth, we would have no nurses, no-one would be a firefighter, no-one would be police, no-one would work in the military, etc etc. In a vacuum maybe, but presumably market conditions would adjust to increase pay for these positions until demand was met (or some other innovation would take their place). That's the whole point of markets, is it not? If there is legitimately enough demand for something, it will be supplied if possible. The phrase "vast majority" to me is shorthand for "I have no data but a strong gut feeling about this". As someone who grew up not poor but close enough to it to have a healthy fear of it, focusing on driving science or social goals is admirable, but a bit of a luxury thing.