It amazes me how far down a dark road folks will travel without taking the time to look around and evaluate if they are indeed heading in the correct direction.
Young people are ambitious and believe the odds don't apply. Academia is no different than other highly variable status-seeking paths, such as entrepreneurship or sports. Different personal values, same basic combination of youthful idealism and hubris.
The west would atrophy and die if everyone took the path of least resistance to a comfortable lifestyle. Market economies with perfectly rational actors would cannibalize themselves in a single generation.
Between the sunk-cost fallacy, and how many years both grad students and would-be grad students have spent on the ivory tower's propaganda treadmill, with little other (adult) life experience to be able to objectively judge things...
This sounds like a fantasy description of a post doc instead of normal real life people, so... maybe talk to some post-docs and learn what their life is really like before putting down entire groups of people for an internet point?
The west would atrophy and die if everyone took the path of least resistance to a comfortable lifestyle. Market economies with perfectly rational actors would cannibalize themselves in a single generation.