I think the issue is we are all mortals. No matter how much wealth we have we will all die. Sorry to crash the party. But wealth can prolong life and make it more enjoyable. People will never have enough so they will work more even when they don't have shortage of food.

Even if you are rich and think you have more than enough, you SHOULD think you want to earn more just to be able to give it away to the less fortunate.

I think you underestimate the number of people who'd accept a relatively comfortable life. Not everyone wants to max things out.

> number of people who'd accept a relatively comfortable life

Congratulations to those who have achieved that level of spiritual enlightenment.

Of course we "accept" what we have since it is what we have. What you're gonna do file a complaint?

People in need think they would be more than happy to "accept" a "relatively comfortable life". Who wouldn't? The point is the word "relatively". Once they achieve that level then relatively happy will mean the next thing.

Many would be content with maintaining a sustainable, comfortable life.

Today the general worker in developed countries is more productive than 40/50 years ago but gets less for it. Less and less middle class workers can afford to by their own house or apartment and those with lower paying jobs are barely getting by often under harsh conditions.

Life should be getting better for all due to overall increase in productivity, but it's getting worse for many or is stagnating, while there are few who have been amassing obscene amounts of wealth and power.

I am one of them. But I don’t consider myself spiritually enlightened. I just realised that I already have more than I need to be happy and content. I used to own an expensive sports car but sold it because it wasn’t practical and didn’t bring me any additional happiness. Quite the opposite. I learned a lot from that.

That “having enough” requires enlightenment speaks volumes about our cultural disease.

Why is it necessarily a disease and not a natural part of the human condition? It seems to me like if we were the sort of beings to say “this is enough”, we would have never made it out of hunter-gatherer.

Ambition and curiosity are separate instincts from greed. If you think all innovation comes from greed, that itself is a cultural belief and cannot explain the greatest innovators in history like Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci or Tesla.

The icon of innovative greed would be someone like Edison who was a profoundly cruel and greedy man who stole the ideas of others more tab he created himself. There's your icon of capitalistic innovation.

The majority of the people who routinely work more than 50 or 60 hours a week don't do it to become rich. They do it to survive.

The stereotypical hard working SV entrepreneur is in a very tiny minority.

Interviews to people in hospices show that one of the most common regrets is having worked too much.

I feel like the word wealth has been bastardized pretty badly, but using its original meaning I'd argue that wealth has to be created; it isn't straightforward to "give it away".

Teaching to fish and all.