Just Leo
People don't want the same things. Even the stuff that we theoretically all "value." Why? Lots of reasons. Here's one:
People have different levels of activation friction and continuation friction, a.k.a. willingness to start things and pursue things.
Some people have really low friction on both. When you can direct that kind of personality toward something, you can get a long way, especially these days, because we've reduced so much of the prior information asymmetry. Public libraries exist, the internet exists, your phone puts what was previously considered a supercomputer in your pocket... and now we have AI that connects to anything and everything.
AI has materially changed both kinds of friction, which puts a lot of information-asymmetry-as-justification-for-all-wrongs to rest. Even with a thing you can literally just tell “look for things to improve,” “are you sure? let's keep looking,” and “continue,” and have it bear all sorts of fruit with unbelievably low effort, people still won't do it. They supply all manner of (often justifiable in piecemeal) reasons. But it's there. You can use it. It's hilariously subsidized relative to the accounting costs. You can do... stuff.
People weigh costs and benefits differently. You can have infinite birds in the bush, but if it's a prickly bush, people don't want to go through it. Even if it's a normal bush and merely rumoured to be prickly, it's the same aversion. They build up dragons in their minds.
I think something similar happens with grand narratives. People get led astray by their own storytelling. They see themselves in certain ways and tell themselves they can't start X or Y. Often it's justifiable because they have other responsibilities. If they do start, they tell themselves they shouldn't continue, which is also often justifiable. There are all manner of papercuts, past-present-future, to be afraid of. So the people who can do both are kind of weird. Relatively. I think I'm one of those people.