Working Class Bullshit: The Myth of the Level Playing Field

What if struggle isn't building character? What if it's wasting talent

There is a common idea that for success to mean anything, it needs to come with a struggle.

You have to grind. Work your way up the ladder. Put your time in. Pay your dues.

And yeah, the truth is success often requires a lot of hard work. But somewhere along the way, we started treating the struggle itself as part of the accomplishment.

Naturally gifted? Had support? Took advantage of help when it was offered? Suddenly your success is somehow invalidated.

But let's be real: that stigma mostly exists for those of us trying to crawl our way up from the bottom.

The people at the top take advantage of every opportunity, every leg up and every helping hand available to them. They call it networking. Mentorship. Investment. Connections. Family support.

Then, when they make it, we clean up the origin story.

Bill Gates is a good example. The popular mythology has him starting Microsoft in humble circumstances, but Gates grew up in a wealthy and connected family, attended an elite private school where he had extraordinarily early access to computers, and his mother served on the national United Way board alongside IBM chairman John Opel.

None of that means Gates wasn't brilliant. It doesn't mean he didn't work hard.

Maybe it means something much more important.

Look what can happen when a talented kid has access.

If we really want to see what society is capable of, maybe we should try eliminating some of the struggle.

How many people never get started because they don't have the luxury?

We count on a remarkably small portion of the population to bring us innovation, expand our knowledge, create art, start companies and solve problems because so many of those pursuits require something we don't like talking about:

Privilege.

Time to study. Money to survive. Good schools. Connections. Someone to help when you fail. The ability to spend years becoming good at something without worrying about whether you're going to make rent.

Every once in a while, someone crawls out of nowhere and does something extraordinary anyway.

And we fucking love those stories.

Because they sell us a dream.

But worse, they teach us to believe we're operating on a level playing field.

If anyone technically has the ability to make it, we stop questioning who actually does.

We point to the person who worked three jobs while going to university instead of asking why someone should have to work three jobs while going to university.

We celebrate the entrepreneur who built a company while sleeping in his car instead of asking why someone trying to build something had to sleep in his fucking car.

The exception becomes evidence that the system works.

But technically possible and statistically probable are not the same thing.

Maybe struggle doesn't build all this talent.

Maybe it wastes it.

How many scientists never became scientists? How many writers never wrote? How many businesses were never started? How many discoveries weren't made because somebody with the ability to make them was too busy surviving?

Bill Gates had talent, access and opportunity, and we got Microsoft.

Imagine what we'd get if everyone had a shot.

Hell, maybe we'd have something better than Windows.