>How would you have any confidence in yourself in your ability to make it on your own?
Doesn't matter. I don't need to make it on my own. I have $100MM.
> How could you help but wonder if you'd be able to live by way of producing or providing something of value the way honest people do?
Doesn't matter. I will never have to produce something or provide value. See above.
> What would happen to your curiosity about the world? There would be whole swaths of things that would be mentally off-limits, lest they remind you of anything to do with the danger of being caught for the heist you pulled.
I don't think there's much of the world that's off-limits with a stack of money $100MM tall.
> Where are you going to go where you won't have to weave a web of lies about where you got your money from?
Assuming I got away with the heist, I don't have to explain my wealth to anyone. I can tell nosey people that I got it as an inheritance and that's that.
> How happy will you be living a life where you are constantly in fear of getting caught?
This is probably the most difficult problem you face with $100MM of ill-gotten gains. You can probably mitigate much of the risk by moving somewhere physically that does not have extradition agreements with wherever you got away with the heist. Of course with that much money, you'd have the means to move anywhere on earth.
> What kind of life is it to know that your continued existence depends on others not knowing certain facts about the world? (Facts that they have every right to know about you...) If someone wrongs you, or does something unjust to someone or some thing you care about, how could you work up the courage to rectify that? Your own hypocrisy would likely stifle any such impulse, before you ever spoke a word of it.
All of these problems are solved by having a sufficiently sociopathic disposition.
For someone who doesn't hesitate to commit a serious crime a successful heist is "making it on your own".
A momentary rush is not comparable to the emotional rewards of true success, or real achievement. Robbing a bank and landing on the moon don't result from or lead to lives that are comparable in any way, emotionally, morally, practically or otherwise.
For someone who sees law as essentially a social, artificial construct (who hasn't internalized this notion), every career is about outsmarting others anyway, in one way or another.
I'm a person with a career, and I don't waste my time trying to figure out how to outsmart other people. (I don't think I could anyway.) I don't know about you, but solving the actual problems I encounter at work (problems which are obviously not attributable to people) are enough for me!
(Obviously I don't know the nature of your job exactly - this is from the perspective of a typical tech employee).
People gain self-esteem in many different ways. Sad as it is, the teacher's last ditch warning to the uncaught cheater "you are only fooling yourself" does not necessarily work on the type of person who is inclined to cheat. It's quite possible the Hatton garden thieves, having liberated a lot of property from what they would consider the underserving rich, felt absolutely GREAT about themselves. They were caught due to boasting about the crime after all.
The earlier tends "to participate in schemes and take calculated risks to minimize evidence or exposure," while the latter tends "to leave clues and act on impulse." While psychopaths are without conscience, sociopaths have one (albeit weaker.)
Are you operating under the assumption that people living with either of these mental disorders are happy?
What does happiness mean to you? I bet it doesn't mean this:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psychotic-affective-disorder...
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/15850/1/Characteristics-...
No matter if you have a mental disorder or not, crime will not make you happy, nor will it get you any closer to being whole again -- not if your standard is a virtuous (good, long, just, prosperous) life.
I don't think there's much of the world that's off-limits with a stack of money $100MM tall.
Except for self-esteem, a successful romantic partnership, freedom from boredom punctuated by bouts of extreme fear?
Assuming I got away with the heist, I don't have to explain my wealth to anyone. I can tell nosey [sic] people that I got it as an inheritance and that's that.
Where is this fantasy island where you can live without talking to anyone? Do you really think that no one would bother to ask questions about a stranger that just moved in next door? Or that they wouldn't do a Google search? Even if they didn't, their friends, neighbors or children might.
> How would you have any confidence in yourself in your ability to make it on your own?
Doesn't matter. I don't need to make it on my own. I have $100MM. Having to "make it on your own" is a bummer. A sudden $100MM gives you the freedom to choose not to have to make it on your own.
> How could you help but wonder if you'd be able to live by way of producing or providing something of value the way honest people do?
Doesn't matter. I will never have to produce something or provide value. See above. If I wanted to, as a fun side project, try to produce something of value, I now have the freedom to try and risk failure, so I'm in a much better position than I was before.
> What would happen to your curiosity about the world? There would be whole swaths of things that would be mentally off-limits
I don't think there's much of the world that's off-limits with a stack of money $100MM tall.
> Where are you going to go where you won't have to weave a web of lies about where you got your money from?
I don't have to explain my wealth to anyone. I can tell nosey people that I won the lottery and that's that. Or I am free to tell them to mind their own business. Or I can tell them that I have a 9-5 job at the phone company.
We're not talking about a person with an enormous ability to create wealth, and their actions would only further decimate their ability to do so.