I think it's because money is so important that happiness cannot be found without it.

Unfortunately, I was born indoctrinated (brainwashed) into this society's ways, so this has created expectations and baselines for what I consider to be the 'minimal comfort required to make existence worthwhile' - To unlearn all this stuff, to 'uncondition' myself from all the stuff I've been taught since I was an infant, is a difficult challenge. Not only, that, but because social relationships are critical for humans, I need friends and a partner who have also been unconditioned. Very hard to find. If such people even exist, they won't be found online by definition.

So yeah, money is crucial. And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't have much money. You can be sure there is no bias there.

The lack of money has forced me to confront my biases. I can't afford biases or blind-spots.

I'm jealous of rich people, green with envy. What I'm most jealous of though, is their blind spots. Having blind-spots is life's greatest luxury. Pure psychological comfort.

Whenever someone says that money is not the most important thing. I see someone with blind-spots who probably has money or is getting some kind of help; from friends, family or the system itself is geared to help them.

They don't understand that the system itself is far from neutral. The system is essentially never neutral, no matter where you sit in it; it either helps you or works against you. I was there, on the other side, my idea of normal was an illusion. I didn't realize how fortunate I was until I found myself on the other side of the equation.

To explain it concretely, the design of the monetary system works like a 'luck allocator'; it decides how lucky you are depending on the topology of your social network and your place within it. There are all sorts of barriers in place (conditioning/brainwashing) designed to prevent you from moving up in the topology. If you're wrongly placed in the topology, you will be perpetually unlucky. You will rarely see any opportunities no matter how good you are or what you do. You will be forced to accept only bad opportunities which exploit you and further entrench you in your place in the topology or shift you further down.

The conditioning/brainwashing gets stronger as you approach the big money; that's why upward mobility is so difficult; wealthy people are conditioned to feel uncomfortable around you, no matter how good you are. It works in surprising ways. Rationally, they can see that you tick all the boxes, but in their gut, they feel like something is off about you and that prevents them from letting you progress.

They don't even realize or appreciate how incredibly difficult it is for someone who 'feels off' to reach their vicinity and what kinds of skills are required to clear all the barriers. They don't understand that the people in their entourage who 'seem off' are probably often the ones they should prioritize because those atypical folks had to work the hardest to get here. Wealthy people are accustomed to comfort, especially psychological comfort. An individual who had to climb Mt Kilimanjaro while fighting off lions and hyenas cannot exude psychological comfort and familiarity in the same way as someone who was born with a silver spoon and never left home.

It's hard to elicit the combo of "Wow, that person has seen things I cannot begin to imagine" and also "Yet they're so relatable..."

Wealthy people don't make friends 'randomly' like the rest of us. That's why rich people all seem to know and mostly hang out with each other. They seek psychological comfort from people who have similar life experiences. They are in their position because of their their blind-spots, overzealous awkward-meter, their predictability. It's also why the distortions in our system are so hard to fix. Almost nobody who has the ability to fix the distortions, sees the distortions to begin with.