i mean, getting rich enough to know 100% sure that you'll always have a place to live, food to eat and good medical care seems like a motivating goal, and it's the only way to escape constant existential threat short of a revolution.

what i cant really imagine is what the hell keeps them going once they have enough money to just vibe.

I feel the same way, but I think for most of these people it's actually about the social rewards/ego strengthening effects and not the material boons. Like, imagine if the constant drumbeat of capitalist society that tells you "you're disposable, you're subhuman, you're nothing" was actually whispering the opposite in your ear. "You've won. You're better than all those wretched people. You are justified, you are sanctified, you made it, you're gonna live forever." Like that kind of external motivation and validation is not a recipe for true happiness, but I have to imagine it feels damn good to have all of society's messaging and all the people you know pretend that you are some elevated class that actually matters.

I knew a guy from a family with a super successful business. Right out of high school he carved off a chunk of his family's business and ran it well enough, so he was always completely set in terms of money and career, but he's always had more artistic sensibilities and curiosities than most business types I've met so I'm not sure he was ever fulfilled by it. After a breakup a few years ago he sold off the rest of the business, started traveling, and never really stopped. I think he's restlessly searching for meaning and community but has zero class consciousness and so he hasn't been able to realize that his position at the top of the pile is what makes that impossible to find. For a while he was trying to pull me out on adventures but I was never able to afford it and wouldn't have been comfortable frolicking around the world with him paying for everything.

I'm not struggling to put food on the table so obviously there's a bit of privilege in saying this, but I wouldn't trade places with him for anything.

So I founded a start up with my partner. It’s an online business that isn’t making a bunch of plastic products and is a service that will help players in our hobby. But honestly, the mental weight of fighting for capital and trying to get funding is.. I don’t know if I really play the entrepreneur game well enough for it. I am good at making connections and leading projects and managing people. But the constant need to sell what we’re doing to capitalists as not only “will make a successful business” but “will 100X your investment in 5 years” is just. Excruciating.

The reason I’m doing it though is that I just don’t see how in the current world I’m supposed to get to a stable and secure state without owning our own business. I used to be a lawyer and I was just protecting the interests of the oligarchy and it was unbearable. Being an employee for someone else is, to my kind, always a risk. We are privileged enough to get this chance to try to build something that lasts, and we are good at it.

Honestly I long for revolution and the collapse of Western imperialism. I’m bourgeois as fuck but I want to dedicate my life to a meaningful cause. In the meantime though I guess I’m trying to “win” at capitalism enough that I can just be independently wealthy and not rely on others. I don’t know. I hate it all