You know something I have hated with a passion since childhood? People who loudly proclaim, “I did it! Therefore, anyone can do it.” Here is an excruciating list of reasons why.

The most successful people are for some reason rich already

I once read that someone from a low-income household might have one shot at being a successful entrepreneur. Someone from a wealthy family? They have an unlimited amount of shots. How many times did someone hear a multi-billion dollar company started in a garage, just to find out it also had a seed fund of several hundred thousand dollars?

Are there people who manage to move from poverty to wealth? Of course. But in this country, they are the outliers, not average person. And unfortunately for a lot of us, we are average people.

But, of course, the people who succeed against all odds are often spotlighted. Not because what they did was something everyone with some sticktoitiveness can expect, but because they are statistical anomalies. Which brings us to my next problem…

It smacks of bootstrap talk

Conservatives do love the idea that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and that one person accomplishing something is proof that anyone can follow in their footsteps. Of course, they say this while passing legislation that makes it more difficult for those with less to do more.

And when someone with less can’t achieve what one successful person did? The solution is simple: blame the person! It’s so much easier to ignore the systems in place that put people in situations that are impossible to navigate. Americans are so used to thinking that the reason they’re not millionaires is because they just don’t want it enough.

The concept of manifesting, thinking you deserve something and willing it to come to fruition, wouldn’t have caught on if we didn’t determine that we are personally responsible for things we have absolutely no control over.

Luck has more to do with it than we care to admit

While I believe it’s important to take ownership of your life and make good choices to put yourself in the best situation possible to succeed at whatever you want, there is a lot we cannot control.

For example, the family you’re born into. Were you born into a rich family or a poor one? Was your family functional or dysfunctional? Were you fed with a silver spoon or did you lick crumbs from knives?

While it’s true that someone can have all the advantages and still fail, while someone with no advantages can succeed, these are still outliers. People who were born in wealth and privilege generally maintain it. People who were born into poverty can have a vertical climb to escape it.

Your success doesn’t have to be my shame

The roof of my problem with this line of thinking is that the success is so easy and obtainable the only problem is the individual who just can’t figure their shit out. Everyone, however, is an unique person with their own set of circumstances. What is easy and natural for one person might be an utter impossibility to someone else.

When the person who succeeded has any number of advantages it becomes a real dick move to hold everyone else, many of whom may not have any of these advantages, responsible for the same type of success. Even when the person who succeeded had no advantages to speak of, their success is so unlikely that even someone else perfectly executing their process wouldn’t be successful a second time.

Life is hard enough, let’s uplift people instead of shitting on them

Seriously.

No one is required to succeed in the narrow, conventional limits we like to put on others. Not everyone is capable of earning billions of dollars, inventing something life-changing, or starting a cultural revolution. But not everyone needs to. Life doesn’t have to look like a sports car and mansion in order to be worth living.

Of course, acquiring wealth is important in the US, because there is no social safety net and without money you will starve or die of a preventable disease. But this is a byproduct of capitalism, and I’m pretty sure the people don’t actually want this kind of life.

Instead, look for success in all kinds of ways. Everyone has something to offer, everyone has a space on this planet, and we don’t all have to have identical lives in order to be worth it. In a world where we are told to be hyper competitive in order to be hyper successful, maybe we just need to end capitalism so we can be who we are and stop fighting like crabs in a bucket.

This world offers enough for everyone. We should just eat billionaires together.