Yeah, the only independent guy I knew to succeed in this carried about $10,000 worth of cards on him from tourney to tourney. You really have to operate at scale for it to be worth the effort, and like you said...at that point, why not something else?
It's more "worth it" if Magic is already a huge hobby that you devote a lot of time to anyway, and if your time isn't otherwise that valuable. The delta of the speculative aspect of it thus becomes a lot less if you're already fully immersed into it, already going into tournaments, already researching strategies and new sets, and already buying/selling/trading cards for deck-building purposes.
I made a decent amount of money off the MechWarrior collectible miniatures game back when I was still in high school. Well, I didn't "make" money, but I essentially got to play for free with a collection that was worth a couple thousand dollars, financed by making smart trades and selling miniatures that I wasn't using or had extras of. I spent a lot time selling stuff on eBay, wrapping packages and going to the post office; to this day most of my seller feedback # is still traceable to these activities. Of course, I was already spending hours a week playing this game in hobby shops and hours more participating in online forums.
This is one of the reasons I preferred Scott Adams' "How to Fail At Everything and Still Win Big." In it, he notes the absurdity of taking life advice from a career cartoonist, notes the impact of luck, and discusses the ingredients for a successful life (including cultivating 'luck'), and why they work. I find it a far better approach than 4HWW.
That's not to say 4HWW is without value, but you're right and we should be clear about what it is.
One side is free to express its views at an institutional, public level. Entire corporations can express support for ill-founded political views to much praise. The other side is condemned for doing the same.
