My dad let me gamble my allowance against himself in poker. Lost it all, obviously. Was quite heartbroken he wouldn't give it back, but I sure learned a lesson :)

I concur with this. Our kid can earn robux doing chores, and she only earns them once in a while. It often leads her to a period of deliberation, where at first she's like 'I so much need this, I must do whatever chores it will take!'. Then gradually as the minutes go by, she gets doubts, and at some point flips into "No. Way. THAT is NOT worth THAT MUCH WORK!" Whenever this happens, I get sort of proud or satisfied. A lot of times it doesn't happen, she does the chore and gets the reward. But other times, especially for costly idiosyncratic choices, she comes to her senses.

The insane spending sprees/binges shrink a lot, when they are expressed in "how much vacuuming and floor washing am I willing to endure?"

> That's why I think it is good to pay your kids for chores or good grades so that they start learning financial responsibility early.

Have you ever read "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn? He states that rewarding for the things you mentioned inhibits the desired behavior in the long run.

Haven't read it but I remember reading about a study where they would watch some kids play with toys, record which were their favorite ones and then in another play session give them sweets for playing with their favorite toys after which those toys would no longer be their favorite.

However even though most people don't enjoy their work we must learn to get past that in order to achieve our goals, might as well learn this early imo.

Personally I hated most of school, pretty much every subject that wasn't math or programming. Rewards did motivate me to learn those things I didn't like.

So maybe only reward them for doing stuff they already don't like doing but would be good for them. If you see your kid doing well in math but poorly in history only reward them for history.

So... Paying people to write software inhibits them writing software?

Doesn't inhibit them but makes the activity not pleasant because your mind is attaching the work itself to external motivation. You don't do it because you want to (for the pleasure of it), but for a paycheck and humans don't enjoy activities like that if they're not starving.

This is how every other job in the world works, you work for money.

Honestly, I don't think there are very many people who wash dishes for pleasure. If you have a kid who loves cleaning for fun, by all means, don't pay them to do it.

Could you elaborate on how that might be?