I have argued that average-IQ people benefit from what I call ‘lottery systems of wealth’, in which the median income is low or even negative, the failure rate is high, and the mean is positively skewed by huge outliers (e.g. athletes, e-celebs, or famous entrepreneurs). Examples include investing/gambling crypto, podcasting, or starting a YouTube channel. These people are not going to be acing tech interviews or landing Jane Street or Citadel internships. So any hope of getting rich means rolling the dice on entrepreneurial endeavors, not the college-to-career route.
The huge successes of the likes of Mr. Beast or Joe Rogan does not change the abysmal math of an industry littered with unsung failures. Aside from good timing, success also requires a generous helping of connections, or what is known in the industry as ‘plugs’. You don’t get on Rogan unless you’re already famous or know someone who knows him. This makes lottery-like systems less meritocratic and more about who you know or timing, like ‘buying Bitcoin early’ or pulling the right strings.
By comparison, meritocratic systems of wealth (e.g. tech jobs) have much more consistent pay and higher median pay. There is less reliance on connections, but rather credentials and proving oneself by passing a gauntlet of difficult interviews and other screening. To make money all you have to do is show up, not ‘hustle’. You don’t even need to be that good relative to your peers, only good enough to be hired–even the worst Jane Street trader is well-compensated. But a ‘merely decent’ podcaster, youtube-streamer, or cryptocurrency trader doesn’t earn much. Of course, connections and experience does help, but it’s not nearly as bad as seen for lottery systems.
There many people on popular Reddit subs such as /r/FatFire, /r/Investing, or /r/Fire in their 20s and 30s who have millions of dollars of assets, e.g. stocks and home equity, by riding the post-2009 tech boom thanks to lucrative white-collar jobs. This is also shown by the huge gap between median ($18,880) vs mean ($49,130) retirement savings for young Americans. This can be explained by college graduates with inflated white-collar salaries, who pull up the average.
Young Americans have practically nothing in their retirement savings.
The median for under-35s is just $18,880 and the average is $49,130. pic.twitter.com/haHQFenVDn
— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) December 15, 2025
A typical counterargument is that this is not actually rich and that ‘true wealth’ means having tens of millions by starting a business, than merely a mid-six-figure job or only a couple million dollars saved up. This come off as ‘cope‘ and goalpost moving. Given how the vast majority of Americans struggle with expenses or not making enough money overall–or how so many retirees are broke despite having a lifetime to accumulate wealth–to have a sizable nest egg by one’s 30s or early 40s sounds pretty good to me, even if it’s far short of Larry Ellison or Elon Musk. This makes you better off than probably 99.5% of adults.
A second counterargument, typically pertaining to AI, is “What if it’s a bubble? You don’t want to put your eggs in a single basket.”
A month doesn’t go by without a leading AI company raising more billions at yet another record-high valuation. Or a major deal between a private AI company and a public company (e.g. Oracle or AMD). The media continues to demonstrate its worthlessness by always being wrong, and then digging into those wrong assertions.
In 2022-2023, it was assumed rising interest rates would see a long-awaited return to sobriety on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley; this was clearly not the case in 2025 regarding AI or the stock market, in general. Even in spite of bubbles, rising interest rates, or economic turbulence, these tech jobs still keep coming out on top, as was seen post-Covid, post-2008, post-9/11, or the recent AI-hiring-spree, the latter which is thriving despite the highest interest rates in years.
So even if AI was to peak, many of those employees would be able to ride the next wave/cycle. Prior experience is still an asset compared to someone without any experience, for whatever is the Next Big Thing. A similar pattern was seen in banking/finance after the ’08 crash.
The question if AI is a bubble is less important for employees compared to investors. Investors of AI companies face much more downside risk compared to employees, who are paid first. With a salary, you’re still getting paid every day that you show up. The company could fail tomorrow, and you would still keep everything that you earned up until that point. If you save and invest diligently, ‘lifestyle creep’ should not be a problem either. For some reason, it’s a common misconception that when you get fired you lose everything and the counter is reset to zero. This would only be true if you spent recklessly due to lifestyle inflation.
At a mid-six-figure salary, all you need are just 4-5 years to enter the solidly upper-middle-class, which easily exceeds the vast majority of podcasters, Spotify musicians, or YouTube creators (except, of course, those outliers, yet tech also has its outliers, such as billionaire founders, VCs, and early employees). Given the above reasons, it’s clearly evident meritocratic wealth is superior. If one’s individual preferences are aligned towards wealth creation, and assuming you’re smart enough, this is the way to go.