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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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they're insulated from consequences in a way that warps their minds.

They frequently don't even realize what is realistic or not. I was talking about burnout once with one of them, and he gave me his sure-fire stress solution: just take a year off and go to Europe. I didn't have the heart to tell him that even if I could afford to take a whole year off work and start the job hunt when I got back, I still didn't have a family chalet that I could use rent free during my visit.

I know you're talking about specific people who've inherited their money, so I'm not calling your post wrong, but I've noticed that rich people very often have this kind of breezy, spontaneous, ultra-low-anxiety personality even before they get rich, or during periods of time when they're poor.

This attitude seeps through Musk's biography in a way that's impossible to miss. You see it in him at all stages of his life, like when he is couch surfing after arriving in the U.S. with very little money and a strained relationship with his family back home. You see it in his ancestors, his college roommates, and his early business partners, many of whom were undistinguished at first but slowly rose to eminence.

In my own life, I've found that you eventually get to a level in the startup scene where you're surrounded by these kinds of elites at company events, and everyone's backstory is like they studied Korean language in college, circumnavigated the globe on a cheap boat, and then started a rodeo business before discovering a passion for databases--and you feel distinctly out of place if your reaction to "spend a year in a foreign country with no money" is an anxious, "well obviously I can't do that."

Of course, it's also true that one strengthens this "everything will work out" attitude through collecting repeated evidence that it actually does, and that requires high and consistent competence. So I remain a bit torn on whether success or confidence comes first.