> I am ignoring food, phone, car, rent and discretionary expenses, as these expenses tend to be constant or not mandatory. It’s not like only high earners need to commute to work, need shelter, healthcare, or phone plans, or have families, in which having more money can only help. And it’s not like these expenses scale with income, unlike taxes.

Author doesn't understand lifestyle inflation (and how insidious it can creep up on you)

> As shown by the many posts on ‘FIRE’ or investing Reddit communities of salaried people making millions–it is indeed possible to get rich working for someone else. These are young and middle-aged people on Reddit who have homes, nest eggs, a good work-life balance, and a high standard of living despite working for someone else, yet are somehow ‘doing it wrong’ or are struggling or miserable according to the Twitter or hustle-culture narrative. Hell, even Steve Balmer became richer than Bill Gates despite working for him.

The last sentence in this paragraph doesn't make sense.

Isn't Bill Gates less rich because he's actively giving it away through philanthropy?

Whenever I hear the personal story of someone who's dumped large amount into the absolutely most bullsh*t scammy cryptocurrency there is always some element of "I heard about Bitcoin in XXX and didn't buy any / got it scammed / sold it right away, and now I'm going to make up for it!"

Spoiler: they usually don't. Many end up in a spiral of buying in to increasingly implausible risk-on choices in an effort to recover their prior losses (which is increasingly difficult and so requires greater returns) and repeated cycles of buy high/sell low.

This is in contrast to people who merely find some crypto thing useful or are interested in investing in it on the basis of some beliefs about it and don't feel like they've already missed out on anything. They too may lose money, but if they appear to lose less, manage the losses better, and they tend to fall for impossible schemes or outright scams less often.

It seems like the specific goal of offsetting a perceived loss is significantly worse than other goals even just a simple "I want to make lots of money".

I wonder if the same thing goes for entrepreneurs too-- do people who feel the pain of missing out on a big tech corp paycheck or surgeon pay tend to go for less plausible businesses?