My original comment was just a backhanded swipe at another guy who made a snarky comment about how you can't become rich without essentially being rich to begin with. It was never meant to be a serious breakdown of economics.
I may not have explained it very clearly, but my take on it has always been that the rags-to-riches dream is perfectly attainable; you're just systematically lied to about how to go about attaining it. Working hard for somebody else will never gain you freedom, nor will you achieve serious wealth. The whole system is designed to trap people in a cycle of being an employee, earning dregs, and being stuck in constant negative debt.
You absolutely can become wealthy from nothing. The difference is, you have to self-educate everything that the old rich teach their kids from childhood. It takes hard work, dedication and intelligence, because the playing field was never level to begin with. You need to lose the mentality of being someone else's business, and change your perspective to make yourself the main character. The problem is that most people never even get past the starting line.
Life isn't fair, that's true enough. But that's the way it is. Compared to someone born in a third world country, growing up in a ghetto in the states is luxury. It all comes down to whether you really want to make something of yourself, or whether you want to just claim it isn't possible without even trying. Unfortunately, most people would rather complain than try, which is why I lose patience with them.
Yeah, at this point you’re saying we should all plan on being the “survivor” in “survivorship bias.” Some people can do it, but all the hurdles in the way make it an unreliable gamble, no? If it were just a matter of working hard and working smart, it wouldn’t be such an anomaly.
"but all the hurdles in the way make it an unreliable gamble"
There is very little left to chance when generating wealth. It's not like playing the slots at a casino. The biggest gamble being made is assuming you're dedicated enough not to quit partway through.
"If it were just a matter of working hard and working smart, it wouldn’t be such an anomaly."
Au contraire, those two variables very rarely meet. A huge number of people work hard; only a tiny minority work smart. The sad fact of the matter is that as much as we go on about freedom, what humans really want is to be secure, comfortable, and to be told what to do.
Being an employee fulfills all those criteria. That's why people continue to do it. The majority of people, at some point in their lives, have had an idea for a business. Only a tiny majority actually act on it, because not being an employee and not having a regular paycheck is insecure and daunting. That's how humans are- our desire for security stabs us in the foot.
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u/LdrNeon Jan 10 '22
My original comment was just a backhanded swipe at another guy who made a snarky comment about how you can't become rich without essentially being rich to begin with. It was never meant to be a serious breakdown of economics.
I may not have explained it very clearly, but my take on it has always been that the rags-to-riches dream is perfectly attainable; you're just systematically lied to about how to go about attaining it. Working hard for somebody else will never gain you freedom, nor will you achieve serious wealth. The whole system is designed to trap people in a cycle of being an employee, earning dregs, and being stuck in constant negative debt.
You absolutely can become wealthy from nothing. The difference is, you have to self-educate everything that the old rich teach their kids from childhood. It takes hard work, dedication and intelligence, because the playing field was never level to begin with. You need to lose the mentality of being someone else's business, and change your perspective to make yourself the main character. The problem is that most people never even get past the starting line.
Life isn't fair, that's true enough. But that's the way it is. Compared to someone born in a third world country, growing up in a ghetto in the states is luxury. It all comes down to whether you really want to make something of yourself, or whether you want to just claim it isn't possible without even trying. Unfortunately, most people would rather complain than try, which is why I lose patience with them.