[lhorie]

You need to look at things relative to something that makes sense in the context of the conversation. Obviously, it's better to be a barista in LA than a starving kid in a war zone, but the context here is that we're talking about people who want to be famous actors and can't, so they take on minimum wage jobs to survive until eventually bitter disillusionment hits.

[burntoutfire]

These people are victims of today's culture, which glamorizes wealth and fame above all else... Before they realize that they've been duped, they waste many years of their lives.

Startup culture is similar BTW - people who take moonshots to try and become obscenely rich, only to realize (if they're in the tiny minority that succeeds) that having so much wealth is not really making much of a change in their life and they've spent important years of their lives focusing on stuff that's not important (see Notch's wailing on Twitter for an example of that realization).