My brother wanted to be an investment banker.

And, as of a few weeks ago, he succeeded, becoming an employee of Goldman Sachs.

Of course, this really isn’t the best time to go into investment banking…

Really? Not having a college degree will still get your resume immediately put into the circular file of almost all HR departments – and well-paying jobs that don’t require a degree generally have their own training period. (You have to train as an apprentice before you can work as a plumber, for example.) According to my parents, at least, college degrees do tend to pay for themselves in the long run.

This seems like a dumb conflation of vehicle and content. Obviously people do dream (who ever made the “mistake” of denying this?), and just as obviously what they dream about is a merely hypothetical (i.e. non-real) state of affairs.

So by this logic, why don’t we see more poor businessmen working day jobs as waiters while they struggle with their low-paying business careers?

It’s about status, not money. Businessmen are thought very poorly of, and they’re seen relatively infrequently in the media. Actors are idolized, and most people are very familiar with them.

Why do you think young children want to be firefighters and astronauts, and not investment bankers or accountants?

I think this is crucial. A lot of people feel very successful just to be making a living at all in their field. total Utility is greater than making 3-4x as much money doing something else.

Also, to make a living at all, you have to be significantly better than the top tier of amateurs in some way, to some audience. Sometimes it’s just about being significantly better at finding and satisfying a market. I know a lot of amateur and professional musicians. Many of the professionals aren’t necessarily better *musicians* in the fine art sense. But they are entertainers as much as musicians and are much better at giving the audience what they want than most amateur musicians.

Am I reading this correctly? I think it’s trying to say [poorly] that utility derived from dreams is no less real than utility derived from material things. That is, if you’re happy hoping to become a superstar, you’re not fundamentally differently happy from someone who’s happy with a lot of money and stuff. In essence, it’s basic economics: your utility from being and actor/waiter is the sum of salary+(job satisfaction)+(utility of hope). Whatever you lose on the first one you may get on the latter two, as compared to someone who has a higher salary but has little hope at superstardom.

Performing is fun. Plenty of actors, musicians, writers, etc. “work” for literally nothing, simply because they like doing it.

I don’t think it will work, but it’s still brilliant.

BTW, Paul Newman made $100,000,000/yr on his salad dressings. Superstar businessmen make more money than superstar actors. So by this logic, why don’t we see more poor businessmen working day jobs as waiters while they struggle with their low-paying business careers?

This only works if you can amortize the high salary of the superstars over a large base of subscribers. This works with movie actors, musicians and sports stars, but not terribly well with teachers, no matter the success of the University of Phoenix.