Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the author point was about what would bring the greatest self-fullfillment. It's not necessarily money. You could be an author or an artist or something else, and have far more fulfillment in life than making 10x working at a job that you're good at but that doesn't bring you as much fulfillment.
Fair enough, but I think it's a simplification of how life really works for most people. For the average person, the choice to become a successful artist isn't a trade off between more money and more satisfaction. If they fail to become successful they will significantly lose out in terms of life's more basic needs, because they won't have enough money. Edit: Don't get me wrong, I would love to agree with OP. But I d…
I see a successful artist as someone who is creative enough to acquire basic needs, comforts, and actualization with little or no money - be it through bartering or learning to create for themselves.
Success can also come in the form of making statements about society through their medium(s) of choice, and ideally changing the outlook an audience.
In this regard, religion and arts were the first forms of software engineering - by the modification of the observers perspective.
Of course there is also aesthetic art, which is beautiful for us to admire because it is proof of the capacity of another humans attention to detail. These works usually don't seek to comment on the state of culture.