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Comment by natrius | Hacker News Reader

> What we're really talking about here, in its extreme form, is Wealth Anorexia--a disease of distorted self-image that causes even the wildly successful to pursue their obsession beyond a reasonable point. ... Wealth anorexia is a problem for men.

There's no evidence that this is a common problem that negatively affects people's lives. The most common result of trying extremely hard to be ridiculously rich is becoming modestly successful, except for the cases in which someone throws their entire life savings into a business that fails. I doubt that is common.

The allure of parallelism has lead the author to an odd and inaccurate metaphor.

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"The most common result of trying extremely hard to be ridiculously rich is becoming modestly successful"

The most common result of trying extremely hard to be ridiculously thin is becoming modestly healthy.

The analogy stands.

I disagree. I don't think many people at all try to become ridiculously thin. Plus, such attempts rarely lead to good health, which is why eating disorders are such a big issue.

Trying extremely hard is not without health risks, physiological and psychological.

Just as "ridiculously rich" is relative (for some people in 3rd world countries it could be having a few thousand dollars) so is "ridiculously thin" (for someone weighing 350 pounds this could be weighing 250 pounds). And I would argue that achieving this goal, in general, leads to better health. This is not to say that exceptions which lead to poor results don't exist in both cases, which makes the correlation even stronger.

You're stretching this metaphor further and further into absurdity. The author of the post wonders why "wealth anorexia" doesn't get similar attention to that of actual anorexia. The answer is because anorexia actually has negative effects on the lives of many people. "Wealth anorexia" does not.

Location location location. Where there are more eligible men than women - men have to work harder.

Even in those places where women outnumber men, men still outnumber desirable women, so hard work still pays off.

I suppose if women outnumbered men by four to one then men might be able to slack off... except such a society would almost certainly reinstitute polygamy, so men would have to work harder than ever to compete for quality and quantity of wives.

The most common result of trying extremely hard to be ridiculously rich is becoming modestly successful, except for the cases in which someone throws their entire life savings into a business that fails. I doubt that is common.

I can't tell you exactly how common it is.

But one have to imagine that the sale of lottery tickets is strongly motivated by the desire to become ridiculously wealthy. This isn't something that generally results in improved savings...

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