You could also see it this way: imagine a guy who climbs mountains. Now compare him to a guy who does not climb mountains. The guy who climbs is wet, he's hungry, he's cold, and he's tired climbing that mountain. The guy not climbing the mountain is warm and comfortable beside his fireplace reading a book. Why is that one guy putting himself through miserable torture and climbing a mountain? Even if he gets to the top, he's still going to have to come down again? Is life not a whole lot more comfortable just sitting down beside a fireplace and reading a book?
I'm not exactly sure if you are saying the guys working as lawyers and bankers are the mountain climbers or the ones sitting by the fireplace. I really don't think they're either.
I climb mountains, and the going up part sucks. I do it for backcountry skiing so it is always cold, usually windy, and very wet. But getting to the top feels amazing, and going down on skis is even better.
The startup is like the mountain climb, there is a top (hypothetically).
For bankers and lawyers, there is no top. There is never a point when you say "that is enough". It is a treadmill, not a mountain climb. You just stay on it slogging for more cash and more cash. First you have an apartment, then you want to have kids so you need to move out to Westchester and buy a 2 million dollar house, then you need nice cars to drive to the train station (which soon will have to be replaced when the lease runs out), and boats, and then a porsche, and then private school for your kids, and then a vacation house in the mountains, and then private college for your kids, then money for retirement, and if you have a lot of money you give your kid the seed money for his hedge fund. It never stops.
