So did I. Your username suggests we might be from the same country. If so, we must have worked for the same awful person of a boss!
(I briefly thought that maybe you were that awful person, but he wouldn't be caught dead in HN; his whole thing was to exploit and abuse the people who did the actual work and forbid them from taking credit or even mentioning the work in a CV)
I agree with sgt101 though. You're right about (1); I don't dream of $2M in the bank, but not having to work for a living, and have all the time in the world to pursue my actual interests.
But (2) I disagree with. I don't have $2M but I probably have enough to retire in a shit country and live frugally (before you judge me: I was born and raised in a shit country, but managed to get to a better place, literally and figuratively). I'd have all the time in the world to pursue my actual interests; but at the cost of living in a shit country, having to worry about my physical safety or other similar concerns.
With $2M though (or more realistically, with $5M, but the point stands) I could achieve (1) in the awesome country where I live now. So yes, in my case, $5M in the bank would absolutely solve the problem.
This makes me think of all these people wasting all that time removing "blacklist" and "master" and all that stuff and patting themselves in the back for a job well done, instead of even thinking of doing anything real to fix the real problems with inequality and systemic racism :(
I hate the double standards in our society. We have people who actually work in the "killing people" industry. We call it "the military", and whenever one of them says they identify as a member, we tell them "thanks for your service", not "hey, do you think your org is evil?". We honor them before sports events. We make the president the CEO of the killing people industry, FFS. And these people are unquestionably, explicitly in the "invading countries and killing people" industry.
So are you seriously asking people who work in tech companies that spread cat videos and enable video chats if their companies are "evil"? With a straight face? Come on.
This thinking betrays both that people in the industry take themselves far too seriously, and that we're so brainwashed to accept these kind of glaring double standards, we don't even stop for a second to question them.
(I briefly thought that maybe you were that awful person, but he wouldn't be caught dead in HN; his whole thing was to exploit and abuse the people who did the actual work and forbid them from taking credit or even mentioning the work in a CV)