| > Even I feel that inequality is partly a result of those with money and influence pulling the ladder up behind them. And that's where you are wrong. Look at it this way: You do very well. Are you actively trying to undermine those below you? Are you out there impeding the guy making a living driving for Uber from succeeding? Or the gal who wants to learn programming to get a better job? Or your co-workers? How exactly do you, someone who by most measures is doing very well, conspire to impede others while growing your empire and sucking-up 80% of the opportunities at your level. I've been an entrepreneur all my life and I've made high seven figures along the way. I can't remember a single instance where I ever thought of pulling the ladder up behind me. I was too busy making sure our competitors didn't eat us alive. And so were all of my friends doing similar things. I barely had any time for my family, let alone conspiring to be part of some evil master plan. Look, folks with money are people, not some caricature fabricated in these victim mentalities. If this evil-ness applies to them it has to apply to you and me. Because you are rich by most standards. You have the potential to put away a million dollars or more simply by working where you work. How many people in the US can do that? Will you turn evil? Are you evil? No. Of course not. Don't apply caricatures to others while you would not, even for a minute, apply them to yourself. As a general position I deplore negative views of reality. Things are not that bad. In fact, in the US they have never been better. Opportunities abound. I mean, just look at you. It took hard work to get where you are. Most people would not do as you did. Is there an element of luck? Maybe, but the saying that says "luck is opportunity meeting preparation" applies in your case, doesn't it? Would it be right to vilify you because you are in the upper n%? No, of course not. You worked for this moment and you deserve it. If others want it they need to work for it, not sit on the sidelines bitching that you and others are pushing them down. Given the range of opportunities in the US I contend one of the reasons for lack of mobility is this lack of drive. People are content playing with their iphones and bitching about the latest political figure on Facebook while some of us are working our asses off and doing very well for it. As a general sentiment, I think we need (as a country) change to an entrepreneur and business friendly mentality. We need to teach kids business and entrepreneurship starting in elementary school. We need to stop vilifying the very things that drive economies. We need to have agencies like the SBA do a better job of empowering startups (they are horrible). Schools are permeated by people who know nothing about business and entrepreneurship and, in a good deal of cases, vilify them. This has consequences. And we are looking at some of them. As a child I had the opportunity to attend high school both in the US and in South America. The contrast between the two school systems at the time (don't know now) was incredible. In Argentina I was being taught accounting, business, marketing, economics, etc. Here, well, nothing of the sort. Another big difference I remember were what I would call the "militant teachers". It isn't uncommon in the US at both high school and college levels to have teachers and professors who use class time to pontificate about their own twisted views of reality rather than teach what they are there to teach. Kids are affected by this. And our teacher's unions pretty much guarantee these people can't be fired, which is exactly what should happen to them. Once again, some of what's wrong in the US is the result of what we are going to our kids in school. If we want to change both our internal wealth balance and our economic standing in the world we have to start with our kids and what they are learning in school. My fear is that, to some degree, it might be too late. We don't have another generation to "save" us. China is at or past the inflection point. We have lost so much focus over the last several decades that we've fallen behind significantly in many respects. And, while it is still true that there are tons of opportunities available to everyone in the US, it would be much better if we changed our focus away from Ivanka's clothing line or the latest political scandal and laser-focused on everything we have to do to make things better for everyone. |
It's really not that. The problem is that you believe personal success and failure are something that entirely depends on you. That is not the case.
You, 'rebootthesystem', were probably not taken off the shelf by God, put inside a body on Earth and left to your own devices. No, you are the product of genetics, environment, upbringing, entourage, opportunities, and so on. Each person grows up to have certain motivations (or lack of motivation) without a choice of their own. You couldn't have been another person than the one you are right now. The choices you make aren't really choices - if you rewind the tape you'd do everything all over again, given that quantum physics doesn't intrude too much.
Your life is fairly deterministic, so you are just the sum of your past, thus it's unfair to say that your achievements are anything but the work of luck. The opportunities you were provided (like education, for example) differ significantly from what you would've had in a Bangladesh slum.
Sure, we can use other people's achievements as motivators for ourselves, but that's biology more than anything else. There's no such thing as self-made man; every person is the result of past events.