He ignores the fact that some of us aren't happy unless we are doing something that stands to make a double-digit percentage of humans on Earth happier, cleaner

He ignores the fact that some of us aren't happy unless we are doing something that stands to make a double-digit percentage of humans on Earth happier, cleaner, safer, healthier, or more efficient. Such people will almost never be happy, then. Here's the rub: creating and capturing value are dramatically different categories of skill. Both are rare (at high levels) in their own right, and they seem to be negatively correlated. Most people who are great at one are terrible at the other. So what most average people do is they find a veteran value-capturer (a boss, or a company) and get "a job" where they create value in small but stable amounts and leave the value-capture to someone else, who takes the glut of reward and then turns around and disburses just enough funds to keep most people (save the few the company wants to get rid of) afloat. Over time, such people lose the incentive to create value and become complacent so their value-creation skills fade, and they never get the know-how or connections that would help them capture value, because their bosses don't want to give that shit up. If you want to have a real, lasting, visible effect on the world, you need both skill sets. Why? Because very few people listen to a person without money or power. If you want a say in this world, which you'll need if you intend to create value at scale, then you have no choice but to capture value, as dirty and nasty as that art can be, in order to get the right to speak. Idealistic people tend to hate the morally gray, political stuff they have to do if they want to capture any value. You're competing against some of the worst that humanity has to offer, and you find out quickly some of the things people (often driven by pure narcissism, and not a desire to change the world) will do in order to win.