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.
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.
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.