[white-flame]

In betting on opportunity, often times they have everything riding on it.

Where does the "harm" you talk about come from? Usually it's because there are other responsibilities you're engaged with. If you literally give everything else up to focus on one thing, these barbs aren't in your life. I'm talking forgoing rent to crash with family/friends, eating ramen, selling/getting rid of your things, live on credit cards, etc, and have a 24/7 focus that keeps you going.

You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on, because you pretty much have nothing else anymore than your pursuit, and can be amassing enormous debt (financial and otherwise). It's a huge amortized, pushed-forward harm in the hopes that the gamble pays off. For many, it doesn't.

[devdas]

That sounds like a fairly large financial privilege to me. If you are working two jobs to just get enough food to survive, and your friends are in a similar situation, you don't have that opportunity or ability to take risks.

[white-flame]

There are people who simply walk away from it all. None of these issues are truly and specifically "to survive", it's all chasing something.

[jhowell]

Spoken as someone who denies the safety net beneath their high wire act. For some the risks described and the comforts forgone in the hunt of prosperity are called life. Losing these resources means intense uncertainty of paralyzing outcomes. It's not our job to understand the plight of all around us with compassion, but it does make it easier to justify incongruent rewards they bring.

[taurath]

> You'd be surprised how much that frees you from the immediate "harm" you describe, but you also have nothing to fall back on..

All the things you described doing are the fallback options - you have to have a family and friends, things to sell, credit to burn. Even then, family or friends have less patience to carry you when you’re taking a moonshot unless they also have a lot they can fall back on.

[white-flame]

Specifically, I meant there's nothing to fall back on at the end if the gamble didn't pay off. Your family/friends are sick of you, you have nothing left to sell, any credit is trashed, and your venture didn't pan out.