<i>> Not just “sit around and do nothing”, because that's still just relaxing. I mean after that, when you're ready to be useful to others again.<p>What would you do then, if you didn't need the money, and didn't need the attention?<p>Yes, we need money to live. We need attention to live, too. </i><p>What's interesting to me about that bit above is that it's presented in this sort of homiletic style, as if it's the distillation of experience down to some obvious and unquestionable core, but it's pernicious in that it's pure ideology.<p>"[W]hen you're ready to be useful to others again," does so much work in this regard. It frames entrepreneurship as <i>a service that is situated within a matrix of rational choices and utilitarian moral justification</i>. We do these things because they're legitimately useful, they just happen to make us filthy rich. This wealth, however serendipitous and embarrassing it might be, is <i>also</i> justified by the actual utility it provides. Zuckerberg is wealthy because Facebook is an unquestionable force for good.<p>The author continues, framing entrepreneurs as, at worst, misguided persons who move from being accidentally useful to being purposefully useful; Persons temporarily blinded by their <i>universal needs</i> for attention and money. Never mind the problem of defining exactly how much attention and money one needs--to say nothing of security and nutrition, arguably up for purchase, or love, validation, and a sense of growth, arguably not up for purchase--to...live? Survive? Get by? Flourish? Never mind all that, once that's taken care of, entrepreneurs like the author can now get back to their innately good core of, from the author's tagline, "mak[ing] useful things, and shar[ing] what [we] learn."<p>Look, fundamentally, entrepreneurs exist to get rich. The "problems" they "solve" are chosen for their profitability, and the rhetoric about utility is just a way to colonize the discourse and deflect attention from the obvious avarice of it all. On the level of manipulation, the level of stopping the hoi polloi from rising up and strangling you, it makes sense; Anyone too stupid to see they're, for example, making their personal lives worse with Facebook so that Zuckerberg can sell ads, isn't going to have the discretion or wisdom to run an economy after any misguided revolt, no matter how apparently justified.<p>As a means for understanding our own motivations and desires, our relationships to the game of Capitalism, these are the guilt-addled ramblings of emotionally crippled narcissists. Basic self-awareness demands that we do better.