It occurs to me that we don’t ask “why don’t you stop” to athletes or actors who have clearly made it to the top of their game. Why should the wealthy be any different? If their “thing” is to work and create wealth, then why should they stop? It’s not up to me to determine what makes other people happy.
I think we probably need to differentiate some of these extremely high net worth individuals from the more garden variety of folks who are in the lower 7 digits of NW. It is possible for someone who is of relatively moderate means to save and invest wisely and get into the lower 7 digits of NW.
There are certain types of work that people can easily grasp being enjoyable, like sports or acting, which is funny because those are two incredibly brutal industries that I would personally never want to work in.
We also generally give more leeway to anyone who doesn't work a MegaCorp office job. We're pretty tolerant of farmers, chefs, doctors, writers, dog breeders, restaurant or shop owners, tailors, politicians, therapists, librarians, archeologists, religious leaders, woodworkers, wilderness guides, professors, designers, etc, etc, etc, who enjoy their work and continue on into their senior years.
What's particularly funny is that this is on MMM's website, the guy who is the poster child for continuing to do work and make tons of money despite having absolutely no need for it. Except in his case, we call it FIRE because he made a career change at 30.
Meanwhile, someone who just stays within their own industry and continues to make more money than they need, they're somehow by default all about the money?
It's an absolutely arbitrary categorization. You can't know any person's relationship with work and money unless they show you what it is. Someone continuing to work despite having wealth says absolutely nothing other than that they have *some* reason to continue working.