Well okay. But what if you're impoverished and must work every day simply to make enough food to survive the winter. That's as much a life "for pleasure". It's not sportscars and caviar, but it's the same drive to acquire, accumulate, thrive, gain wealth (survival). These people are also working for the good of the civilization. How do you know that the big spender dedicating their time to redistributing wealth they generate isn't contributing anything? Surely civilization does not live on ideas alone. We can't all be depressed pontificators, and i for one believe there's nothing wrong with not wanting to live the ideas you're stating here. Sure, there are hard truths, but there's also ways to state them with beauty and not brutalism and disdain.