Sure and I made the caveat that some can't be changed. I'm speaking more to specific goals. If just contributing to defense is your goal, then yeah you can work around your issues like you laid out. But if your goal was to become an elite, like a Navy SEAL, then you would run into problems there. I'm talking more about goals like that, where you have a specific position or field of work you want to do, but lack the resources to get there.
I'm talking about it being irrelevant to the individual, what others have achieved, because their circumstances would be different. For example, I had to be home schooled in fifth grade, because my health issues prevented me from being able to attend. I was too sick to even get a GED after I "graduated" high school, so as far as society is concerned, I haven't completed a high school education, even though I completed the same curriculum as others. Yeah, my situation is well out of the norm, but this was the point I was making, when I said what others have achieved is irrelevant to the individual. High school is a low bar to set in the first place, so lots of people do end up completing it. But it's under the assumption that you can attend it for that length of time. That's true for most, but there are circumstances like mine and others, that prevent us from being able to attend. The fact that others have successfully done so, is ultimately irrelevant to our current situation.
Again, my original point was to say that failure isn't always the fault of the individual, there are other factors in play.
Sure, but you gotta eat as well, don't forget. If you're doing these things as a hobby, putting your work online or simply submitting it to publishing isn't that big of a deal, that's not your main job. But if you're trying to do these as a career, it's paramount that you get established as quickly as possible. Places like iTunes or Amazon is a very cost effective way to do so, but you are essentially planting your tree in a vast forest. There's no guarantee your work won't be lost in a vast sea of others, doomed to obscurity.
You can get a temporary job in the mean time, which is often how artists have survived, but don't forget the wage stagnation. These kinds of jobs don't pay a living wage anymore, so you often need to work multiple ones. And if you're working multiple jobs, you don't have the time or energy to network or work the publishing system.
J. K. Rowling managed to write the best-selling series in history from her first book and become a billionaire from it. A story of success surely, but the thing is, she was on the UK's welfare system while she was writing the first one. And she was rejected by twelve publishers and spent a year before one hesitantly agreed to publish her book, telling her to get a day job. Now stop and think about that for a minute. She was presenting gold, but all those publishers were convinced it was dung. Had the publisher that finally agreed, not shown it to his little girl who requested more, we may have never seen all this happen. Mere chance produced a $15 billion franchise.
Now could she as a single mother manage to pull the same off in modern day America, with its poor welfare system? Would one of the publishers here have agreed before she gave up? I can't really say for sure, but I'm going to guess not likely.
I guess, but 9/11 is a rather extreme and rare example. I think a better one would be all the mass shootings and how (un)likely it would be for a white collar worker to get caught up in them.
And sure, if someone rich doesn't desire it, they can coast off of their wealth, although that's a pretty common measure of success by America in the first place. I'm talking about poor people that have that desire versus rich people who also have that desire. If we all recall Trump's "small" loan of a million dollars from his father to start a business versus the scratch poor people start with. Yes, I know Trump managed to **** things up business wise even with all of that, but the fact that he's now President despite all that, should tell you how much that wealth gets you in life.
Not to mention how all of our greatest innovations, from the automobile to the smartphone, were all developed by the Government and funded by taxpayers, then handed off to various rich people like Jobs and Ford, with no strings attached. The same doesn't seem to happen for poor people.
Yeah, this is what I was pushing back against. Technology gets significantly cheaper quicker, compared to other things. It's not particularly fair to say things weren't as good before, but are "better" now because everyone has big TVs and smartphones. What's in a smartphone currently, costed tens of thousands decades ago. That's not really comparable to investments such as education and houses, which are significantly more expensive than before. Yeah, you may not have had internet or digital music, but you had affordable housing, education, and the ability to support a family. All things that I think we can agree impact your life more than surround sound.
Hell, I have all that stuff and I live on a limited income. And without scrimping on food, my health issues wouldn't allow that. It's called living frugally, so you can afford shiny things once in a while. But even if I still had every penny I've ever acquired, I still wouldn't be able to afford healthcare, a house, an education, a family, etc. And that's the real difference between the older and younger generations. Thinking your quality of life has improved because you have more shiny stuff, is a very materialistic mindset.
That's why I brought up Milliennials and Boomers in the first place. Boomers lived in the best time for investment and acquiring wealth. Having all of the opportunity the post war boom afforded, having a society and Government wiling to subsidize and invest in their healthcare and education, plus having an inflationary crisis that ended up eating their debts later on in life. Once the crisis had passed and the neoliberal era began, they had already acquired their wealth and are now on top in a system that was designed to cater to them. By virtue of their birth, they managed to avoid being drafted in all the wars, grew up in the strongest middle class in American history, had their debts paid off by a major inflation crisis, and got to create the new system we see today. That is utterly stunning, how lucky they've been and how uplifted their success has been by sheer happenstance.
Millennials on the other hand, got to be born in and grew up in times of massive cuts to public education and infrastructure, became an adult in times of wage stagnation, rampant price inflation, all of the previous opportunity long since plundered, and in a system designed by Boomers to sustain themselves while eating the Milliennials. It's no surprise that all the cuts to investment is for younger generations, with education, preventive care, public infrastructure, social and welfare benefits, etc, all have been cut and are in the process of being further cut. And those are being cut for things like tax breaks for the rich (Boomers), funding more wars, and bailing out the assets of the rich banks that ****ed up when committing fraud in the trillions.
These two generations could not be more different in terms of the circumstances they were born in, external factors that influenced their lives, and the opportunity they've had. Yet the success of Boomers is attributed to hard work and struggle, the failure of Millennials is attributed to their love of avocados and iPhones.
Bottom line is, there is a fundamental difference between commodities and wealth. What shiny toy existed in what era is completely irrelevant to the issues today. What issues previous generations faced is completely irrelevant to the issues today. If we wanted to take the "Back in my day..." to its logical conclusion, we would pretty much undo all of human civilization's achievements and return to being a primitive society. Because anyone who uses such a phrase/sentiment, always starts it conveniently at their generation, ignoring how they had it better than the previous generation or that by virtue of being born in a first world country, they enjoy certain privileges and amenities that are gotten by the exploitation of third world countries. Those aspects are ignored, because this is a way to feel superior or resist change.
Even
doctors and other STEM graduates still have these issues as well. Degree shaming is just another way society attempts to shift the blame to the disadvantaged for its failures. What you studied was never an issue before, given that these courses exist in the first place. This is all only done after the fact of rampant greed and deregulation causing this debt bubble. And business owners refusing to pay a living wage, while enacting unreasonable degree and experience requirements for said poor pay. There seems to be this delusion in business, where they think they can hire skilled labor for minimum wage.