It's interesting, he certainly made a successful show of his running around proving something, but he's ultimately at the same conclusion many of us are where we can kind of tell we are staring out at wasteland when we look at society.
I've glorified poverty and dilapidation largely because I've always assumed I'd be poor forever regardless of what I did. I figured I might as well learn to get enthusiastic about poverty, dysfunction, and obscurity if it was inevitable.
Now that I've escaped it, I ask myself: "What the hell do I do now?"
What do I actually want?
After years of training myself to "want" a poor life on the distant (rural) margins, now that I no longer have to do that I have no idea what it is that I actually want. Always, I've let my blackpilled perspective on my own station interrupt my ability to want anything. If it wasn't ultra-cheap, I simply forced myself to not want it, period.
Now? I could realistically make it work almost anywhere with careful planning. Could get into all sorts of businesses, try anything, make any number of interesting or edifying gambles or ventures... this is solely because of careful, anxiety-inducing levels of fiscal caution and extreme frugality.
If you've ever wondered why it is that I seem "all over the place," it's this exact thing. It's this combined with becoming a father and realizing that the dilapidation and poverty I've forced myself to "want" isn't actually what I want to give my kids.