Why You Shouldn’t Take Advice From People Who Suffer the Entitlement of Privilege

Help me fight the abusers. Upgrade at 30% offThere’s a meme that regularly gets churned up from the depths which I saw again yesterday. It’s a graphic that claims to know the difference between rich people and poor people. The meme provides a list of items that are meant to demonstrate the mindset that leads to success.The first item states that poor people spend $1,000 on a new cell phone while rich people spend $1,000 to start a new business. Usually, that’s where I quit reading.In my travels, I’ve been to places where people survive on less than $30 a month. When I first went to a place like that, I couldn’t believe what I saw. It’s startling to recognize what some human beings have to endure even in the modern era. I felt almost a wrenching in my mind as my entitled assumptions were forced to come into alignment with the reality of the world.I think if more people had that kind of experience, the general public would be less inclined to share inaccurate and offensive memes on social media. Tragically, a large percentage of people spend their whole lives sheltered by a bubble of protection. They never have the privilege of a foundational experience that allows them to realize the extent to which chance contributed to their life of ease and comfort.The problems with the first claimI’ve owned my own business. The idea that you can start a business for $1,000 might be technically accurate, but it’s not very practical. A real business that provides enough revenue for a comfortable living is going to require a major investment of both time and money.In the summer months, my daughters put up a lemonade stand. Even that requires a start-up investment. You’ve got to buy cups, water, sugar, and lemons. You’ve got to make the signs and have a place to sit.Most families allow their children to use household items such as chairs, pitchers, and spoons. However, if you really want to teach your children about business, you should make them rent those things. At the end of the day, if they make $20 in sales, you should show them that their costs are $35, and they’ll have to work the next day just to break even. That would be a truthful lesson about starting a business.But the other thing the meme fails to recognize is the vast number of people in the world who don’t have access to $1,000. Even people who purchase a cell phone don’t have that money. They get tricked into signing up for a predatory payment plan. They’re easy marks because basic financial knowledge is usually not covered in schools.I recognize that I grew up with privilegeI’ve worked minimum wage jobs and we had some lean times when I was growing up. Still, I’m fully aware that I’ve had huge advantages in my life. Some people start to bristle when you point out that they lived a life of privilege, but I don’t understand their objections. This is simply recognizing the other side of the claim that we live in “the best country in the world.”Other people don’t have the advantages we do. We declare it all the time.We should all be able to recognize it’s a fact that there are people out there who faced greater challenges than we did. It’s appropriate to give credit where credit is due. We should show appreciation for the individuals who worked hard and made sacrifices so that we had the best chance to succeed.Practicing that kind of mindful gratitude is what keeps us humble.However, it feels a lot better to stroke your own ego with the baseless declaration that you didn’t receive any help. When somebody says this, I take it as an inadvertent confession of privilege. Some people have received such advantages that they have no understanding of true hardship.A society of people who can’t see beyond their own experienceWe live in a compartmentalized society. It starts in school where kids are divided up into different classrooms. A child in one class might struggle in math while a child in another class might succeed. The successful child is probably inclined to assume the struggling child is “dumb.”But what if the struggling child’s teacher is incompetent? What if the school doesn’t have any resources? What if the child has an unrecognized issue with vision, language, or hearing?It’s ludicrous that we are inclined to assume “superiority” is the only possible explanation for a discrepancy in achievement.Out of an infinite number of possibilities, we almost universally defer to the one that strokes our own ego. It’s pure hubris. It’s offensive. People exhibit this attitude every day in the ignorant hate memes they choose to share.Everybody is guilty of thisGetting caught up in your own little world is a universal tendency. My wife often has to remind me that I see life from the perspective of a 6-foot-tall, 220-pound white man.She’s a petite Latina. From her accent, it’s clear that she’s an immigrant. Even though we occupy the same space, she might as well be on a different planet.As we go through life, there is a lot of information we have to process. All of our senses are recording all the time. We’re going to miss things that we see directly. Therefore, it shouldn’t be that difficult to concede that the world other people experience might be radically different than our assumptions.When you give advice to somebody who doesn’t share your reality, you might inadvertently set them on the road to ruin. My path to success is so different than that of my wife that any advice I can give her is close to worthless.Don’t gamble what you can’t afford to loseThe same thing applies when we’re discussing the acquisition of wealth. There are times in your life when you’ve developed enough financial security to take a risk, and times when taking the risk is unwarranted. No matter how well-prepared you are and no matter how hard you work, any undertaking can fail.If you listen to the wrong people, you might be exposed to the kind of setback you can’t recover from. $1,000 might not seem like a lot to some people. To a person making $30 a month, losing that much money would be devastating.The critical piece of information that “wealth gurus” omit is how they could always rely on an unnamed third party to bail them out. If you blindly listen to incomplete advice, and if you allow that advice to form your worldview, you set yourself up for failure.Be careful what you believeThere’s a generally accepted belief that you should seek out the people who are living the life you want and ask them how they got there. That theory seems reasonable enough, but it turns out it’s as absurd as the idea of a flat earth. If the person you’re talking to doesn’t share your point of origin, then your “expert” doesn’t know the path to prosperity any more than you do.They can’t show you the way because you’re not even on their map.Privileged people don’t know your reality. They give you steps A through C when you need steps A through W. Their advice is incomplete because you have to overcome obstacles they never had to confront.Once you move away from the deception of “assumed superiority,” you achieve the actionable insight that will allow you to find success in business and in life. Only take advice from people who are familiar both with where you want to go and where you come from.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe