There is something that I find existentially baffling: people who quit their job upon a lottery win. I ignore the not unrelated issue of attempting to play a lottery in the first place, for now. Quitting after getting a lottery prize rather implies that the primary reason for them having a job was the financial benefit and also they would rather not being doing the job at all. It reminds me of arguments against prostitution: “sex workers would not be doing it except for the pay, therefore it is bad”. This argument then applies to these lottery winners (who worked in information technology). It seems people who have jobs they would rather not do are wasting their time in a form of slow suicide. Or perhaps Camus has warped my fragile little mind. A third possibility is they were pursuing a private passion (family life for instance) that was merely supported by their jobs. They can now focus on that more fully. In that case, working long hours at a hated job is slow suicide…

The antithesis to the lottery quitters might be people who voluntarily live on less than they earn, or who choose to work part time because it provides sufficient income. They perhaps realise that happiness is mostly independent of wealth (except I will admit, the case of lack of wealth or resources causing starvation).

Anti Citizen One