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Comment by tensaix2j | Hacker News Reader

Accumulation of wealth may not be the ultimate goal, but it shortcuts your way to achieve the goals of other pursuits.

I think you will find that, in general, it does not. Often it actually detracts from your ability to pursue other goals. People think, "I need money" to do X. They put off X until they "have money". All along the way they intend to do X, but the prerequisite of getting money consumes their time and energy. The funny thing about money is that it's a bit like computer memory. No matter how much you have, you can always find use for more. I'm not going to tell you that nobody needs more than $640, but there is a point at which you have "enough money" and "enough" is usually a lot less than people imagine. Probably you have "enough money" to start now. In that way money is not a short cut -- it's a long cut.

I think for a lot of people, they don't want to compromise. So if you are thinking "I need X so I can live in the wilderness and write books without having to worry about a job", then they put off writing books until they are rich. And by the time it happens (if it ever does -- which is rare), they find that they don't like writing books, and their spouse, who was attracted to them because they are rich, refuses to live in the wilderness.

Compromise is the true short cut. It allows you to start now, with less resources than you would like. It then allows you to build your life so that the thing you wanted is part of it. Even if you need a lot of money to achieve your ultimate goal, remember that it needn't be your money that you spend.

P.S. Even if your dream is to sit on the beach every day and get drunk, I assure you that this is very common amongst the poor ;-)

For most of my twenties, I lived in Hawaii for some years pursuing exactly this agenda. I was very poor, but by the beard of Zeus I had a mighty fine time.

But at what cost? Certainly you could work at a Biglaw firm in NYC (or whatever) and get rich if you're willing to trade your youth and your health. But is that smart?

You're making several very large assumptions.

1) That you have to trade your health. I wonder if lawyers at Biglaw live longer than the bottom 75% of income earners. My opinion is that they very likely do.

2) Smart isn't applicable to the context you set up. It's dependent on what you want out of life, these are personal life choices. If I prioritize money over life expectancy, and I get rich but die at 63 years of age (due to the work lifestyle I undertook to get rich), that was my subjective choice - smart doesn't enter into it.

3) Most people with careers trade their youth for work to some substantial degree. The exceptions are extremely few, and extremely far between. Just working 35 to 60 hours per week, from the age of 20 to 67 (the soon to be social security retirement age), is heavily trading your youth for work.

There is a difference between healthiness and life expectancy.

1) You very much do in some jobs. You can't work 70 or 80 hours every week for long stretches and maintain your physical and mental well being. People really do that, and the ones that can maintain the pace for a few years make boatloads of money. A guy I knew like that was able to afford the best medical care when he had his first heart attack at 43. He may in fact live longer than the bottom 75% of income earners. I doubt it.

2) The article makes the assumption that because wealth doesn't correlate to IQ very strongly it must mean IQ doesn't help you become rich. My point is that doesn't necessarily follow and it may be that smart does enter into it - maybe nearly every smart person could get rich and decides there are better ways to live.

3) There's trading your youth and then there's trading your youth. I would say a guy who works 40 hours a week and has other interests does a lot less of it than a guy who works 60-70 hours a week and does nothing else.

Your point 2) is not correct, I think. The article does not really say that: it says that high IQ is one of the drivers of wealth, but it is not a sufficient condition to determine wealth, because other factors are at play in a meaningful way.

Yes, the article says that, but offers no evidence.

Let's not pretend that many folks in startups aren't doing just that.

The person working at a concreting factory for 60 hours a week to try and save is in the exact same position.

My biggest concern isn't that you can work away your youth and health like that, it's that a lot of people of my generation have no idea that's what they are doing and were gently coerced from a young age to imagine the house/car/work triad as the three ticks of success in life.

Except the Startup is "glamorous" and the concrete labour is not. And the concrete worker doesn't think about making concrete after he clocks out.

almost everyone is doing that.

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