I agree with the points brought up by aphyer and sunwillrise on working hours, and would like to offer additional thoughts. A friend of mine, when he got his first job, saved until he could last a week on his savings, then a month, and so on. This gave him a buffer he could use to tell a horrible boss to shove it.
These days, phone apps like Stockpile allow one to invest as little as $5 per fractional share of NVDA, AMZN, GOOG, and AAPL, with the help of services like Motley Fool for 25¢/day.
Just as people vote with their feet to get into the U.S., I’m wondering if some of the people living in campers may be voting with their feet within the U.S., preferring that lifestyle to that of working with horrible bosses in order to join the crowds at Disneyland. Thinking of the 2024 essay by johnswentworth on Orienting Toward Wizard Power, a frugal lifestyle may be their wizard power, and Stockpile may be their way to modest wealth.
“People are building AI because they want it to radically impact the world,” but maybe it’s already good enough to do that. According to the 80/20 rule, we can get 80% of the results we want with 20% of what’s required for perfection. Are we so sure that isn’t enough? Eric Schmidt has a TED Talk ("AI is underhyped") where he says he uses AI for deep research; if it’s good enough for that, it’s good enough to find the power we need to solve the crises in sustainable power, water, and food. It’s good enough to tutor any kid at his own pace, in his own language, and gamify it; it’s good enough to teach the middle class how to handle their money for retirement. We should be singing the praises of “good enough” AI instead of saying why we can’t have ASI, which is more dangerous than it’s worth to us. And even if we can’t charge ahead, maybe a weaker system can give us hints about how to safely approach a slightly stronger system.