[deleted]

Wow, you still have a lot of unplugging to do and unlearning of the socialist crap you've been taught.

Remember that any society is just a large group of individuals so the optimal outcomes for a society will be achieved when all the individuals in the group are free to pursue their own interests as long as they don't aggress against the persons or property of the other individuals in the group. Given that:

1. As long as your self-actualization does not include agressing against other people's persons and property (don't use physical force against others to coerce them and/or steal from them), then your self-actualization contributes wholly to what's best for the group.

2. In a free market, every career contributes positively to the group, because if it didn't then it could not sustain itself economically. Careers that others did not find valuable enough to pay for would be economically inefficient and could not be sustained beyond the short term.

3. In a free market, no one ever "overpays" for anything. As long as all trade is voluntary, people only pay what they are willing to forego for any good or service based on the relative value to them of both the good/service and the payment - which is a subjective measure. Certainly some people pay more for a given good or service that might be find-able elsewhere for less, but that is only because they value the time and effort that it would take to find and acquire the good or service for less more than they do the cost differential, even if they don't know exactly what that differential is (in which case they are making a probabilistic determination). You are confused on this point because all the economics you have learned to date has been based on the (Marxist) objective value theory which holds that there is one observable intrinsic value for any good. This theory is so flawed as to be ridiculous because it presumes that human wants can be objectively measured - in essence that there is no value to individuality and thus no subjective value to goods. Marx (and his ilk) were absolutely abysmal economists which is why communism and socialism inevitably reduce the productivity of all the societies which adopt Marxist tenets and eventually impoverish them. If you wish to understand a much better cornerstone for the construction of an economic model, it would behoove you to study the subjective theory of value as a basis and then continue along the Austrian-school path.

4. Negative-sum economic outcomes are only possible when aggression and coercion are used to force involuntary economic decisions on others. In a free market, you can only succeed when you provide enough value to market participants to compensate you for entrepreneurial innovation and risk-taking and thus earn a profit for having innovated and taken business risk. Thus, if you do earn a profit it is only because you are serving the greater group in a way that the group demands (ie you are contributing to the greater social good).

5. It does seem as if your definition of "ethical" has more to do with your subjective choice structure than any particular objective measure. In other words, you are labeling your choices as "ethical" and those of others that are different than yours as "unethical." You should probably start with a basic principle and work outwards from there to avoid your obvious bias. For example you may hold that aggressing against other's persons or property and/or using the threat of violence to coerce others into involuntary action is unethical and then work outward from there. You'll need to do something like that to establish a standard for the measurement of ethics/morality that has any integrity at all. As it stands yours is an incoherent mish-mash of your personal likes, dislikes, and insecurities.

6. You have to love honesty to be RP - that's why it's called the Red Pill. BP is enslavement to dishonesty. It would seem that you still want the "juicy steak" even though you now know [have been told] that it's not real. You need to know that the steak you're eating in the BP restaurant isn't real, and then you won't pine after it. In Restaurant BP, you still actually think you're better than the "finance bro" because you've pinned him as "unethical" in your subjective ethical construct. That's the lie, and you're telling it to yourself in order to preserve a false sense of self-worth. You're not better than him just because you chose the "ethical" career in your own subjective ethical construct. If you think that RP is about lying to others (women) then you don't get it yet and will fail miserably. Women of value are pretty good at spotting false confidence. You've got to stop lying to yourself first.

7. Real power is internal and comes from conscious observation and mastery of the self, not from your career path/choice, not from "acting alpha," not from following the advice of morons on this forum (myself included), not from your religious leaders, not from your political leaders, and not from money that you inherited.