Consider this: you can become a multimillionaire within a year of the step option, and have even less stress as you become able to live off investments for the rest of your life. You can even run for charity to have a more fulfilling life if you so choose, it stops being a constant chase for money.
Winning Capitalism is all about investing enough to take care of your needs indefinitely. With the step option, you win, and retain the ability to gain more money if you wish. With breath, you deprive yourself of that option.
I don’t care about “winning capitalism”, I care about living a comfortable life and being able to pursue my hobbies. $150k a year is more than enough, and I don’t have to worry about investment bullshit, it’s just guaranteed constant income. As long as I’m alive, I’ll be breathing, that’s 100% guaranteed. Winning the stock market is not guaranteed, and being able to use my legs for the rest of my life is also not guaranteed.
Winning the stock market is guaranteed unless society collapses just by investing in a broad market fund. You don’t worry, you just make money. 150k is not enough in many cities to have a family, unfortunately, and you also can’t run for charity.
You don’t need to use your legs after the first bit. You get in shape, and then you have well over 150k, not losing to inflation with no raises ever again. You’re done.
$150k per year for the rest of my life would be way more than enough for me and the lifestyle I want to live. I currently make less than that, but still have enough to invest and donate to charity, so this would be just a straight, guaranteed upgrade with zero changes to my current life.
I understand that I could make more with the steps option, but I’d be thinking about it. Any time I was off my feet, I’d be thinking to myself, “I’m missing out on money right now”, and I don’t want to have that nag for the rest of my life. Give me the no-work, no-change, fully automatic upgrade over the steps option every day of the week.
Someone did the math. It’s $315,000 not $150.000. So plenty to live on and still have some left for investment.
As for winning capitalism: capitalism is a travesty that’s killing both people and the planet. I would rather people stop talking about winning such a system - there are truly no victors. To be the victor in capitalism is to be a cell of a tumor that slowly kills its host; you only live until you finish killing the host or the host fights back. We should kill and consume those responsible for capitalism like macrophages consume cancer.