This is what I was trying to get at. I think there's a whole class of people out there who just like to build things.

Being king means responsibility and headaches. Being rich is nice but once you get past a certain point it all becomes abstract wealth as the author points out.

What's left after that? For a lot of the best engineers I know, reverting to '6 year old w/ big box of legos' mode and just building something to see how high you can go.