loss-aversion
Explanation
The Joke
A man presents a self-help scheme to his friend: instead of buying nice things you enjoy, you should spend your money on things you hate during your earning years, then sell them off in retirement and buy what you actually want. The logic is rooted in the psychological concept of loss aversion -- the idea that people feel the pain of losing something more strongly than the pleasure of gaining it. By owning things you despise, getting rid of them feels like a gain rather than a loss, and acquiring the good stuff in retirement feels doubly rewarding.
The friend points out that this "systematic" approach amounts to "ruining your life," to which the man responds that he is going to write a self-help book about it. The friend notes it will have no readers, but the man counters that it will have "mass appeal" -- a contradiction that underscores the absurdity of the entire premise.
The Humor
The comic brilliantly satirizes the self-help industry's tendency to take a legitimate psychological finding (loss aversion, a concept from behavioral economics pioneered by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky) and stretch it to an absurd, life-ruining extreme. The humor lies in the gap between the seemingly rational economic logic and the obviously terrible practical advice. It also mocks the confidence of self-help gurus who package counterintuitive or even harmful ideas in the language of optimization and life-hacking, fully convinced of their brilliance despite the obvious flaws.
References
Loss aversion is a key concept from prospect theory, developed by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, which demonstrates that people tend to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains. The comic takes this well-established finding and extrapolates it to a deliberately ridiculous conclusion.