thomasp

I am a libertarian capitalist, who has made a reasonable amount of wealth. This article is good, but it ignores several institutional sources of "unfairness" in common parlance. The most obvious ones through history were slavery, government-sanctioned racism, widespread sexism and so on.

Leaving those things aside, today active government policy promotes borrowing vs saving (through Federal Reserve credit policy), and actively bails out Wall Street speculators - who made a mint during credit bubbles.

Common people aren't stupid if they feel at times "the system is stacked against me". It often is stacked against them. I am no socialist, but libertarians recognize that the fastest way to push people into socialism is to institutionalize unfairness this way.

You know that is a good attitude for society. It is only during financial bubble times that people develop the flip-it mindset.

I am a PG fan, but the only thing I am not a fan of is his built-to-flip mindset. The coming downturn will cure it - most companies aren't going to find sugar-daddies, so would actually have to figure out a way to make it on their own ...

You are shooting down a strawman. The choice is not always or even mostly between "working entire life in forced mediocrity" vs "buying freedom". I have worked in a job, and I now own a successful business (and so I am reasonably wealthy) and I have actually enjoyed both. I was happy in my job, was paid decently, and I did some really interesting work. Then why I did I leave? The desire to be closer to family, that was the first motivation and a sense of adventure. Most of my former colleagues from where I worked (after 10+ years on the job) are quite happy too, and some of them have 20-30 patents to their name.

And statistically speaking, most Americans actually report being happy in their jobs. Anecdotally, I know many of my own employees turn down a lot of headhunter calls, often offering a lot more money - I assume that is about as real a test as it gets that they are happy in what they are doing.

This is not to tell you what is right for you. If you want to start a business (like I did) by all means, go ahead. I am just saying reality is a lot more nuanced, and a lot more complex.