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Tim O'Reilly on money: It’s easy to get caught up in the heady buzz of making money. You should regard money as fuel for what you really want to do, not as a goal in and of itself. Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations! Source: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-matters-...
> The freedom to do whatever one wants, wherever one wants (within moral limits, I hope).
This overreaches. You cannot do "whatever," "wherever". This implies complete control over one's circumstances, which is obviously absurd.
More precisely, money buys increased control over your circumstances and life. This is very valuable and empowering, but it is clearly limited.
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This Hans Rosling talk from a few years ago shows how most indicators are improving worldwide (e.g. reductions in child mortality, GDP per capita). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
Depression is also rising to epidemic proportions, suggesting that improving economic indicators may simply not have anything to do with quality of life.
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Instead of the pursuit of freedom, we should dedicate ourselves to obligations that honor ourselves and others Says you. I appreciate the freedom to sit at home and play a video game on a Saturday without feeling compelled to meet the needs of others.
Sounds like you're honoring yourself. Carry on.
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I desperately want you to be Ghostface Killah. Fantastic story by the way. How did you acquire your wealth if you don't mind me asking?
Sorry to disappoint but I am another yet another programmer/techie who picked his handle based on early hip hop influences. Most of the money was thanks to entrepreneurial endeavors and code. I love building things. I still build, focus is just a bit different now.
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>This assumes that wealth is a zero-sum game, so it can be traded around but not created. >And it very much is. You may be confusing wealth with money, which is in fact a zero-sum game. Wealth, on the other hand, can be created and it's been constantly created all the time throughout history. The section on the Pie Fallacy in this article may help clarify it: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
> You may be confusing wealth with money, which is in fact a zero-sum game. Wealth, on the other hand, can be created So can money. Neither wealth nor money is zero-sum.
I liked this article because unlike many on this topic the author's viewpoint was fairly nuanced. However I still think the author goes too far in his claims of how useless money is. First, raising children is very expensive, and to put 2 or 3 kids through college requires a lot of money. And most single people would like to have a family at some point, so they need no excuse for saving money. Second, money (and cons…