Not having read the following parts, nor watched the video, my immediate reaction is...
1) Ok, you got me motivated. 2)
Now suppose an upper-class person found themselves in your neighborhood with your resources? I don’t mean a lazy trust-fund kid with no skills. Someone who culturally understands money, who earned it themselves, or had parents who taught them well. How long would it take them to get out and back up to their standard of living? How would they do it? Really think about it, for at least five minutes.
Pick up a phone and call their upper-class family or friends, would be my first guess.
A sufficiently smart and diligent working-class guy could copy my strategy in a decade, because it would take him a lot of time to learn to code during weekends, and then he would still be missing university education and job experience. And this is still because the profession of software developers is extremely open and supportive; trying to become a surgeon the same way wouldn’t be that easy.
And I suppose the upper class is way more protective of its assets. I could start at the bottom and spend a decade or two fighting my way up the pyramid, competing against people who have the same goal and who all know that only one in a hundred can achieve it.
A formerly upper-class person who was magically stripped of all their assets (how exactly do you remove the contacts and references? ok, suppose they moved to a different country and had to change their name) would at least still remember how the game is played, what are the winning moves, and what are the fatal mistakes. Also, the fact that the person already was there, suggests they have the necessary character traits. (Just like a programmer who had to leave their country, change their name, and start using a different programming language, would still have intelligence, curiosity, systematic thinking, etc.)
For a person who wasn’t born in an upper-class family, probably a good move would be to befriend someone who did, and try to learn from them. The obvious problem is that upper-class people are often already surrounded by tons of people who try to befriend them for various reasons, and they have the necessary defense mechanisms.
I guess what I am trying to say is that attitude is not enough, and attitude together with high general intelligence is… better than attitude alone, but it still only gives you a ticket in the lottery with many participants and few winners (who are then disproportionately visible).
Not having read the following parts, nor watched the video, my immediate reaction is...
1) Ok, you got me motivated. 2)
Pick up a phone and call their upper-class family or friends, would be my first guess.
A sufficiently smart and diligent working-class guy could copy my strategy in a decade, because it would take him a lot of time to learn to code during weekends, and then he would still be missing university education and job experience. And this is still because the profession of software developers is extremely open and supportive; trying to become a surgeon the same way wouldn’t be that easy.
And I suppose the upper class is way more protective of its assets. I could start at the bottom and spend a decade or two fighting my way up the pyramid, competing against people who have the same goal and who all know that only one in a hundred can achieve it.
A formerly upper-class person who was magically stripped of all their assets (how exactly do you remove the contacts and references? ok, suppose they moved to a different country and had to change their name) would at least still remember how the game is played, what are the winning moves, and what are the fatal mistakes. Also, the fact that the person already was there, suggests they have the necessary character traits. (Just like a programmer who had to leave their country, change their name, and start using a different programming language, would still have intelligence, curiosity, systematic thinking, etc.)
For a person who wasn’t born in an upper-class family, probably a good move would be to befriend someone who did, and try to learn from them. The obvious problem is that upper-class people are often already surrounded by tons of people who try to befriend them for various reasons, and they have the necessary defense mechanisms.
I guess what I am trying to say is that attitude is not enough, and attitude together with high general intelligence is… better than attitude alone, but it still only gives you a ticket in the lottery with many participants and few winners (who are then disproportionately visible).