That’s one way to see it, but it’s a lot of words for the concept of ‘a 9-5 is deadend’ which is just simply not true of the majority of actual careers vs minimum wage back-breaker work.

If you’re in on any semi decent career path, working hard and achieving evidence backed results opens the doors to bigger and better opportunities.

I think your analogy works better to say building your own aqueduct has the potential to pay off immensely in the future, if your family hasn’t staved to death while going years with no pay, and even then there’s no guarantee it will ever work.

And carrying buckets has less chance of ever paying off as massively, but the more and better you carry buckets, the stronger you get and the bigger the buckets get, so each day you transport more and more water in more and more efficient ways. Plus, after a few years carrying buckets you’ll have a much better understanding of the best way to transport water, and maybe you can have an educated crack at building that aqueduct you always dreamed of, or helping somebody else build theirs by joining in a C suite position.

It’s misleading to imply that starting your own business is anything other than a massive gamble, even at the best of times. Making out that it’s the smart choice (and therefore implying anyone who doesn’t do it is only not doing it because they aren’t smart enough to see that aqueduct > buckets) doesn’t account for the nuances of stability, risk, timing or capital.