[carsongross]

Freedom means having everything you want and not having to take any shit from anyone to finance it.

There are two directions to attack this from: make a sufficient amount of money and also work mentally on wanting less.

The beauty of the second direction is that it doesn't tempt you into a leveraged position where you can really lose it all. It lets you approach wealth from a position of strength: fuck you, wealth, I don't need you. And, paradoxically, it ends up making wealth (and certainly freedom) more likely.

I'm aristotelean about the whole thing: there is obviously a balance between the two. But I tend to think that the natural desire for money and freedom is often used to manipulate otherwise sane people into desperate positions of weakness vis-a-vis wealth.