How can you weigh two different lifestyles against each other?

YouTube - Cobra Gypsies
- It isn't clear how accurate this documentary is at portraying the day-to-day life of people in that group, but there seems to be a lot of elements that people are missing from western work

I should copy in my discussion with Tom / Chris.
I think the best way to answer this is to talk about the fact that people in one lifestyle will gravitate towards another one. So the best way to answer this may be to talk about one lifestyle being "preferable" to another in the sense that it will grab people from the other lifestyle.
I strongly suspect that people enjoy novelty to the point that there may not be a single "perfect" lifestyle. People may want to vary their lifestyle. An example of this is people joining the Peace Corps for two years.