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.
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.