Many clubs open and fail, which could potentially leave you worse off than the average guitar player. At that point, you could be in the red a great deal if you took out more loans than what could be recuperated by liquidating everything.

that doesn't contradict anything i've said...

what i'm saying is that your model doesn't account for the above additional fact.

Just to clarify, it isn't "my" model. It was just an article I thought was interesting.

I think the point is sound, that most people would rather take stress over intense thought. You can argue with the analogy, and I think you've raised some valid points against the analogy. I just don't see what the point of arguing against the model instead of arguing against what the author was actually trying to get across.

sorry, don't mean to go back and forth, but a result based on such a flawed model is not something i care to examine.

he essentially asks why people choose something that is more stressful and has less rewards ignoring things like job and financial security, which by definition affects "stress" and "rewards" however they are measured. So now the question "why is [such and such] true" becomes completely meaningless because [such and such] is not proven true.

I think this blog is trying to get people to transcend the thought that money = happiness. If you read his other posts, you can see that he often talks in terms of fulfillment, not money.

I actually value the notion to try to attach a metric to a fuzzy term like 'happiness', even though it doesn't work. At least it displays the will to measure everything.

Edit: happiness = serotonin level in spinal fluid. Suicide cases show low levels after autopsy.

i didn't imply anything of the sort...

actually that's specifically why i chose the word "money" and not a word like "wealth", it's the skeptic in you that assumes people mean money=happiness ;)