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Comment by pyrrhotech | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps it's my own superego unable to understand experiences outside of my own mind, but I think you either didn't get enough money or haven't learned how to transmute it into happiness. Money is freedom and freedom is happiness. It's that simple. If money doesn't make you happy, nothing will. If you have enough money, you can do anything you want. If you don't have enough money, you can't do anything you want. If you can do anything you want, then by definition you either have happiness or you are unable to achieve happiness. It really is that simple.

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The thing that makes me happy is sitting in a room with a few people I really like and building something I'm interested in. We already all live in nice houses and have the computers we want. We can eat wherever we'd like. If I want to take a vacation I can afford it.

How will having more money make it so I can better sit in a room with a few people I like and build stuff?

I mean it's not like being wealthier will make my Netflix have cooler stuff in it.

> If you have enough money, you can do anything you want.

Man lives not by bread alone. Only a simple hedonist is going to find contentedness through a pallet of cash.

It's not the actual cash. Money is actually worthless in and of itself, it's the using of it that makes it worthwhile.

Money gets you access to resources to MAKE things, that is why R&D takes so much money. You have to pay a lot of people to think and work hard - only if it's your money you can pay them to think and work hard on YOUR idea and YOUR dream.

Money also gets you the ability to influence change, politically or otherwise. Right or wrong that is how it works, and deciding you are better than that and not playing the game won't stop that from being true - all that will mean is that it will be that much harder for you to actually influence.

So no, money is worthless, it's the things you can do with it that will find your contentedness.

Many of the things we all find contentedness through can be purchased with cash. I for one would love to take a multi-year round-the-world trip with my partner, or own a house and a grand piano I could use without having to worry about neighbors. Does that make me a materialistic hedonist?

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