[coldtea]

>haberman's point still holds: nothing's really stopping a poor single working mom from being a starving woman in Africa, or a captive suffering torture and indignity. There are plenty of starving people elsewhere in the world who literally risk their lives to be a poor single working person in America.

That's not much of a point though.

Sure, it's a spectrum instead of being a binary "has it good/has it bad". Nobody said otherwise.

But spectrum or not, Page is on the very very very top end of the spectrum. He is in the very end of the "has it good" category, with miles to spare from the rest 99.999% of the population.

That doesn't change because an American 2-shift working 20K/year single mom has it better than an African modern-day-slave.

[ewzimm]

The point is "has it good" isn't something that can be distilled into a score, as in Larry Page's 99.999 compared to starving child #42's 1.001. Many people would rather live as a poor child on a relaxed island rather than have the life of Larry Page. One of the great things about modern life is that you don't need to be a billionaire to have the things most people want: modern medicine, meaningful work, endless entertainment, access to a supportive community. You can buy jets and eat endangered sharks, but how much does that really improve your life? The tradeoff of endless stress is only something certain people are willing to accept.

[thringsaround]

Except that if you are Larry Page but you would rather live as a poor islander you can do that, but if you are a poor islander and you would rather live as Larry Page you are still forced to live as a poor islander.

This is nowhere close to difficult to score. Larry Page 1, poor islander 0, won in regulation.

[seanp2k2]

This. It's the choice part that matters. He has basically 100% control over what he does any day. He doesn't really have to do anything he doesn't want to. If he does something he hates every day, that's his choice, and he's probably very aware of this fact.

[ewzimm]

Objectively, he could drop out whenever he wants, but choice isn't always that easy. People get accustomed to their lifestyle, whether it's forced or not, enjoyable or stressful. He's connected to people who have expectations, there's social pressure, internal pressure, pressure from his employees. Many people in positions like that do drop out, but do they always make a clean break? I think the point was that it isn't only the choice that matters, the power and freedom that comes with money doesn't trump everything else that goes into a person's life. While they might bring a lot of benefits, it's not all good, and the side effects of being in a position of power often make a person more powerless than ever. Once you're playing on a higher level, the competition is fierce and the expectations are sky high. That can trap a person into a certain path, even if they seem to have the resources to do whatever they want. It often seems like the people at the highest levels of power are the least free.