“If I Can Do It, Anyone Can Do It” Is A Big Fat Lie
It’s just more anarchist crap blaming the sheep for not being strong enough to prevent the wolves from eating them
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
The Horatio Alger Myth
I am sick of some successful person spouting the “If I can do it, anyone can do it if they were only willing to work as hard as I did” lie.
That nonsense is all part of the Horatio Alger Myth that semi-anarchists like to blather to bolster their nonsense fantasies that poor people are poor because, unlike their success story, poor people deserve to be failures because they have chosen to be lazy and stupid.
Bull shit.
BTW, stupidity isn’t a choice. It’s imposed on people by the genetic lottery of who their parents were and the environmental factors during their mother’s pregnancy and that they encountered during their formative years.
Anyone Means An Average, Ordinary Person
And who is this “anyone” who can do what the exceptionally rare Horatio Alger clone did?
In even the most generous definition of “anyone” you’re talking about the middle 60% of the population, excluding the 20% at the very top and the 20% at the very bottom.
Anyone is
- the guy looking up your tire size at Wheel Works,
- the young woman leading you to your table at Applebees,
- the guy driving your bus,
- the woman processing your refund claim at the IRS,
- the guy driving the truck carrying the tires to your local Wheel Works,
- the young woman cleaning your teeth at your dentist,
- the guy who just passed the first part of the CPA test and is preping tax returns at H&R Block,
- the young woman who is chasing down sales leads at a boutique kitchenware manufacturer,
- the guy handling the inventory ordering at that same kitchenware manufacturer,
- and so on and so on and so on.
The Average Person Doesn’t Have Your Talents Or Personality
Here’s a flash: these are average people and none of them are exceptionally smart or possessed of huge amounts of excess energy beyond that required to go to work, pay the bills, try to get their kids off to school, keep the car running and hold their family together.
None of these “ordinary people” are naturally, genetically endowed with high levels of intelligence, energy, determination, talent or craft.
They are average people with average intelligence, average energy, average determination, average talent and average skills. That’s exactly why they are “anyone.”
Well, anyone does not have the genetic makeup, the intellectual ability, the common sense or the personality tools
- to found a Microsoft,
- to work two full-time jobs while they pursue a PhD in biochemistry,
- to figure out a way to get the money for and successfully create, operate and grow their own business.
People With The Talent To Be Horatio Alger Are 1 In A Million
The people who have the intelligence, the determination, the energy, the human intelligence and the common sense to become a successful Horatio Alger are exceptionally rare, literally one in a million or more.
The people who can be Horatio Alger have won the genetic lottery for physical stamina, intelligence, common sense, and all kinds of other abilities that you need to have in order to create a very successful business or have an advanced, marketable, career without copious amounts of family money supporting their cost of living and cost of education for the first twenty-five or so years of their life.
When one of these Horatio Alger types boasts that “anyone can do what I did” it makes as much sense as the guy who won the lottery claiming that “anyone can do what I did.”
They just won the genetic and family lottery instead of the power ball one.
You Can Choose To Rich As Easily As You Can Choose To Win The Lottery
Yes, anyone can buy a lottery ticket, but buying lottery tickets is not a viable life plan. You won the Power Ball lottery by sheer luck. The next million people who copy you and buy their own lotterty tickets will not be successful.
Similarly, Horatio Alger won the genetic lottery and on top of that s/he was in the right place at the right time with the right mentors and the right financial and human support to be successful.
The next million ordinary people who came along who do not luck into that rare combination of intelligence, determination, energy, personality, etc. have as much of a chance of becoming an Horatio-Alger success story as the next million people who buy a lottery ticket have of picking the winning number.
Most Poor People Do Work Hard, But They Don’t Have The Tools To Be Rich
Most poor people aren’t poor because they are lazy. They are poor because
- they didn’t have a family that could afford to pay their bills for 25 years until they were trained in a career,
- they didn’t inherit the genes that would give them superior intelligence, determination and energy
- they weren’t raised in an environment that was free of gangs and drugs
- they weren’t raised in an environment that offered them early access to a good job,
- they weren’t raised in an environment that encouraged education but rather grew up in one that discouraged education.
Successful People Won The Family Lottery & The Genetic Lottery
Winning a lottery is not a choice. It is chance.
If you won the family lottery, the environmental lottery, the genetic lottery, good for you. But don’t tell me that the majority of people who grabbed their own lottery ticket and came up double zero could have had your level of success if they had only been willing to work harder.
No one can choose to win the power ball lottery and no one can choose to win the genetic lottery or the family lottery. That’s luck, not choice.
Just because your number floated to the top of the pile doesn’t mean that “anyone” can achieve your level of success if only they would just try harder.
Pure crap!
Ordinary people can’t garner your level of success just by trying harder any more than a turkey can fly like a hawk if it would only flap its wings faster.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
