[chx]

But the discussion is about why do you need more than $100M. All you are describing is well within the realm of $100m. Even low ten millions is plenty -- let's say you arrive to 20M when you are 30 years old and expect to live another 60 years. This means that if you set aside 5M for safety etc you still can have a $20k "salary" every month if the money is invested in a way that it keeps up with inflation. That's a $5k plane ticket, 200 USD/night hotel room and 300 USD/day on food and such. Forever. And that's just 20M.

[snitko]

One simple reason why I think it may make sense to want more money is to do interesting important things. If you earn more money, the market obviously thinks you're good at producing things that sell. It's not perfect as sometimes the market (e.g. the people) prefers something rather stupid. However, in general, I think entrepreneurs are the ultimate redistributors of money in the society. I don't believe government is effecient at doing the same job: it doesn't care whether it wastes it, it always knows it will get its share (taxation is not voluntary) and it's filled with people who have no idea how to actually make a useful product. An entrepreneur earned his money by people voluntarily giving it to him for something they want. He knows what a failure is.

So yeah, I think wanting to earn a lot of money is great and no one should feel ashamed of wanting that.