Very cold indeed! And I wonder if that's an "objectivist" take on things, you know, from the Ayn Rand school of "How to Be Selfish."
No one gets "there" by their lonesome. Some benefit from "accidents of birth," while others are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Even the great Jackie Robinson needed help, but he gets credit for "breaking the color barrier in MLB." Gates, Jobs, Clive Sinclair, Obama, Lincoln, Reagan, Marichal, Phelps, Jordan, Larry Bird, Ichiro, Can?, Jeff Koons, Letterman, The Who, The Fab Four, the Bard, Crocodile Dundee, Lula, Evita, Tom, Dick, Harry... they all needed some help. There ain't no self-made success stories. No siree. Even if you print your own legal tender, still have to invent ink and paper and stuff. NO. ONE. PERIOD.
"Oh, but those poor Dominicans could've done what I did: I went to Concordia." Oh, yeah, some are also born with a silver foot in their mouth.
Dislike away, but that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. NO. ONE. PERIOD.
This sounds like a "You didn't build that" moment.:cheeky:
Usually people who believe that never "built" anything for themselves. They tend to be the folks who work for others, the gubmint or live off a teat someone else created.
You seem to have a lack of understanding of Objectivism and/or Libertarianism. You aren't the first, others have come here preaching strong mocking, disparaging opinions on those subjects while understanding not one thing about either beyond what someone has *told* them; Ludwig von Mises called such people "Useful Innocents." Neither Objectivists nor Libertarians believe in anarchy or NO gubmint.
While, yes, some come from backgrounds more favorable for success-be it economic or genetic (specifically IQ, the ability to learn and retain, lack of mental pathologies preventing the application of such and free of propensity toward addiction), they are not singularly reasons for success. Far from it.
And everyone in the US has equal access to the same resources provided by the common infrastructure created through gubmint contracts we have recently heard so much about. And for which "top" income earners and eeeevil wealthy paid a disproportionate amount of their labor and acquired capital to fund.
That is, no doubt, an equalizer.
Each of us has 2 great equalizers that gubmint didn't create, precious commodities that defies wealth, social status, geography, heritage and economics:
- Time. Each human on the planet has the same 24 hour day to work with.
- Associations. Each of us decides who we associate with. This includes family.
Maybe I've been lucky my entire life (I define "luck" as the intersection of preparation and opportunity). Maybe I've lived a charmed life and have been blessed with being surrounded by some amazingly successful people. But I have observed in my life that there exists some sort of common cause-->effect in those successful people: how they spend their time, who they associate with and their tolerance for delayed gratification.
How we choose to spend our time, and who we choose to freely associate with is, by far, a greater predictor and influencer of personal success than any road, bridge, teacher or gubmint bureaucrat ever could be.
We each have just 24 hours in a day. We get to choose how to use it. There are no do-overs, and no trial lawyers to file a tort to recover damages for it's improper use. Some choose 8 hrs. in economic pursuit, 8 hrs. sleeping and 8 hrs. recreating. This is their life, 8 hrs. of required economic fulfillment and vacation pre-funding and 16 hours of self-gratification. This is the life that the vast majority of First Worlders choose.
I don't know one really successful person who lives like that. The successful people I know have NEVER worked an 8-hour day striving for success, nor spent 2/3 of their existence on self-gratification. There are few lines between their economic pursuits and self-gratifications, the lines are blurred or don't exist until well into their self-actualization years.
Who do you think will be more successful: a chain-smoking alcoholic expat telling tall tales to anyone within earshot of his barstool, or a solid workaholic expat like rubio-higuey? Who would you rather associate with? Yeah, I know, trick question...:cheeky:
Most people choose to associate with people like themselves. It's easy. And defining. It's rare when a work-a-day type hangs with a highly successful person, mainly because the successful person chooses to not allocate their time in that association. And vice versa. They are just too different in thought processes.
Some call it snobbery. I call it selective time and association allocation. I can choose to associate with successful people learning from them and sharing information for problem-solving and project growth, or I can associate with people whose focus is recreation, self-gratification and/or condemning and talking trash about more successful people. The two universes rarely overlap.
Alvin Toffler wrote Future Shock in 1970. He described the "future" we are now living in with amazing accuracy. But the essence of his book centered on three primary points:
- Like Newton's Law, for each increase in "High Tech" there must be an equal "Hi Touch" societal adjustment,
- "High Touch" social adjustments will come with great stress because they require a non-linear learning curve that will not be intuitive, and
- If one wants to move through this learning curve successfully they will have to leave behind many comfortable social and geographical associations and embrace new ones.
But I also understand jealousy and the Class Warfare mentality. There are many who use both for the purpose of acquiring political power. Many non-achievers are easily seduced when someone gives them a "it's not your fault, you're a victim" Excuse Card. And this card gets played forward.
I understand the need, borne through jealousy and a realization of ones underachievement due to misallocation of time, association and gratification resources, to demean others who are successful and to join a mob tearing them down.
Virtually every successful person I know went through years of delayed gratification. I know I spent years slugging through grad school, living like a poor student until almost 30, driving an old beater I barely kept alive week-to-week, often eating popcorn for dinner, going a day or so without sleep, dressing like a refugee...while my "friends" mocked me, drove new cars (financed, of course), had fancy threads, partied on Friday nights and watched the latest, coolest TV shows...when I didn't even have a TV. My story is hardly uncommon. And I had it easier than my med school friends.
I don't understand the need to tear down successful people. Once upon a time in America we admired the successful, we praised the philanthropic, we sought to associate with their success. We named streets and parks after them and gave them "keys to the city." That was once the American Dream: the reward for unbridled achievement unrestrained by society and gubmint based on risk and effort.
Now an element mocks them and ridicules their achievement through innovation, drive, dedication to a task, delayed gratification all at great personal risk.
If roads and bridges and teachers were the real keys to success, the 1% wouldn't exist. They'd be the 99%.
But that's not how wealth is created.
