I just hope the Lost writers weren’t inspired by the ending of King’s Dark Tower series.
Sawyer did say he planned to buy Microsoft stock at one point, so he did at least think about it.
Wanted to register, though, that I don’t think it’s necessarily stupid to choose to go back to the future rather than get rich in the seventies. Twenty years is a long time to live without access to the modern Internet… and I for one don’t think I’d want to go through such a twenty years, even as a rich man. (Where “the modern Internet” here should be understood to stand in for a wide variety of modern tech, of course.)
That will probably sound crazy to some people, I guess. But modern tech is just… really cool and useful and fun… and without it, I’m not sure I could feel quite satisfied even if I had more money than I could ever spend. I mean what would I spend it on? Cars and vacations? Lots of books? Nothing I can think of quite gets me going the way new technology does. I don’t think this is stupid, it’s just a personal preference.
I’m as technology-addicted as anyone, but I’d do it in a heartbeat. Imagine going back to a time where you can let your kids out of the house to play on their own recognisance all day every day, or at least when it’s not raining. Where not everyone is obese. Where if you devoted your life and your considerable “knowing the future”-generated wealth to a given cause you might be able to do some actual good for whatever cause moves you. Hell, you might be able to prevent 9-11.
My entire life has been all about computers, but I think I’d give up technology for the simpler times and easy wealth. Hell, you’d get several years of casual sex before AIDS even existed. (Though the grooming habits of the 70s might take some getting used to.)
Wow, apparently my neighborhood is in a 1970s time-warp! …suddenly all of the Nehru jackets and bell-bottoms around here make so much more sense. 
You can now. There is no more danger to your child now than there was in the 1970s. Or even earlier. It’s just publicized more.
According to the producers, it isn’t that he makes them suicidal: they just really really like him and are all like “oh boy, it’s Walt!” And then… WHAM.
The island wasn’t done with them yet, so just like a stick of DYN-O-MITE! it snuffed out a few brain synapses.
I, for one, am enjoying the ATL-as-epilogue. It solves the way-too-many-endings problem that weakened the third Lord of the Rings movie. How do you tell the end of multiple characters yet leave the climax where it belongs - at the end.