I invest quite a lot of time for blogging and getting higher Pageranks. But what for? This all doesn't generate any revenue right now. Will there ever be a project that get me more money? Certainly some aspects of blogging are very unseful; for example blogging about topics which were talked about at the university.Since you want to talk about money, instead of diamonds... let's do that.
I think our system of using money as a medium of exchange is a superb one. And I think that the fact that money has no intrinsic value (unlike other currencies people have used - when they exchanged salt, or cows, or what have you) makes the whole system fairer. Money is not worth anything, unless you pass it along to someone else.
Of course, just like when sitting down at a family board game or card game, we see that if a person doesn't ever put his heart into playing the game, he won't do very well. And when folks are distributing resources and the bounty of the world, those who opt out of playing the money game are doing something which is tantamount to going on a hunger strike. Altruists who produce free software, and writers who blog for free are producing something and not gathering the resources they need to do a better job tomorrow with their work. They're poor schmucks.
There are many blog posts on the hacker-news (by ycombinator.com) are about failing/success in life or just in your field of work. But you even can think too much about your next year in your life.