"There are plenty of good 8 hour/day engineering jobs that pay well and have interesting problems to solve."
If I can't take vacations whenever I want or have the freedom to come and go as I please, I consider it slaving away. No job will allow you to do this.
"I wasn't assuming consulting/freelancing at all. If you're going to run a business you're going to have customers. These customers need support and can be much worse than anyone you deal with in office politics."
Possibly. However, you can always fire customers. I know I have. Also, when you are consulting, it's just like having another boss. They tell you exactly what needs to be done. I ran a consulting company a couple of years ago..and I won't do it again.
When you are running a product/service, you may take customer input, but you make the final decisions. That's the difference.
"If 'might make [you] rich' is why you want to do a startup you're probably going to be disappointed."
I'm already making more than I was making at a job. I've only been running my company for a year. The reason many startups don't succeed is because many of them don't think about how to monetize it. Making money is almost always my first priority. If I know it's going to be difficult to monetize an idea, I usually move on. Another problem is that many people think the answer to success is getting bought by a larger company or getting VC.
"The odds are stacked against you and the risks are high. If you're really good at tech, most of the top companies pay well and give job stability which is what many people want."
High risk = High reward. Most companies aren't as stable as you might think. At least with my own company, I make the choices that directly lead to my success or failure. I've worked for too many companies that made ridiculous decisions that led to major profit loss or huge layoffs..and there was nothing I could do about it.