Eric Hoel at The Intrinsic Perspective:
Imagine that in every business school students were told, in all seriousness, that they were in training for being a billionaire. Imagine it was heavily implied that the natural conclusion of their careers—what “making it” in business meant—was legit billionaire-status. Judged from the outside, such a situation would appear the enactment of a collective pathological delusion.
And yet an equivalent, at least of a kind, occurs every year in the arts, in writing, and in music. Functionally, at least. For when it comes to certain creative fields, while there are other tangential options than simply becoming very famous (like working for a non-profit, or teaching creative writing at a university) there is an incredibly steep, punishingly steep, impossibly steep, beyond-Pareto-distribution-steep curve wherein only a vanishingly small fraction of people make a living via their artistic efforts alone.
More here.