I don't know what it is that often makes successful people seem to lack basic empathy. I assume once you've succeeded following a certain path, you think the options that were available to you are available to anyone – if only they were good / smart / strong enough to make the most of them.<p>Such smart people seem to lack a basic understanding that the world is a complex place, and social, cultural, and economic forces can have as much a role in shaping life trajectories as one's abilities and ambition.<p>Or perhaps to put it another way, not all hardships are created equal.
The Guardian says the piece is not from Jack Ma: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/sep/26/rich-work-harder-ceos-jack-ma" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/sep/26/r...</a>
Am I missing something? In the article it said "If you're poor at 35, no one will pity you.", not that you "deserve it". The headline seems like click-bait.<p>At any rate, even the statement he did say is demonstrably not true as there are certainly some people who will have pity. But so what? Someone feeling sorry for you I suppose is nice, but being broke sucks.
Odd title. I don't see anywhere in this article where Jack Ma is actually quoted as saying this. The closest I found was towards the bottom of the article. And since this article covers two different people, it's not clear who this statement should be attributed to. Or maybe the statements are from the author of the article.<p>"When you have not accomplished anything by the time you are 35, no one will pity you."<p>This quote could have a much different meaning than the title.<p>This seems to be a fluffy article stuffed with motivational statements from the author with some short biographies thrown in. It was originally written in Chinese and translated into English. Maybe it didn't carry the message as well in English.
Had Jack Ma been born a generation earlier, he might well been swept up in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and sent "Down to the Countryside".<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sent-down_youth" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sent-down_youth</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_the_Countryside_Movement" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_the_Countryside_Movemen...</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution</a>
It seems like a lot of people are confused about the wording 'deserve' in the title. The word is not mentioned in the post, but is a direct translation from the original post. (Yes, I speak Chinese.)<p>Just to add, the original post has been around for months, and I have not yet seen the actual reference to the speech that he was giving in either video or audio, so it seems like a fake post to me. And the wordings are made to be really strong to catch attentions.
It's not "you deserve it" (which has a bad connotation, as if not being rich is derogatory). More like, if you seem to be unable to amass cash, then you are probably unable; do something else instead.<p>Being rich or poor is overrated, this is just another condition like being healthy, or able to read Chinese. Everything can be fixed to an extent, and depends on whichever characteristic is perceived as more valuable to have.
I think this depends a lot on the country and how much economic opportunity there is. In some countries- like china in the past, for instance- you couldn't start a business without favor from political elites.<p>If you live in the USA, made $10 an hour (just a proxy for "minimum wage"), you net about $18,000 after taxes, or $1473 a month. IF you can find a room to rent for $400 a month and spend $300 a month on food etc, that leaves you about $750 a month to save. That's $9,000 a year or $153,000 over 17 years (the time it takes to go from 18 years old to 35 years old.)<p>That's assuming no growth in your income or returns on your savings over that period.<p>What's worked well for me personally is, whatever my income, I've tried to live like I had half of that income.<p>This is easy in some places, harder in others. Impossible in New York City (I think.)<p>This is also why I think that Remote work is a huge opportunity-- people could live in cheap places while earning an income from companies in expensive places with high value businesses.<p>EG: Programmers moving to Butte Montana and working for Bay Area Startups.
The successful gravitate toward the view that each individual emerges from previous circumstance onto a basically level playing field and that the best ones win.<p>The unsuccessful similarly gravitate toward the view that each person is a product of factors utterly beyond their control and that success is basically down to which vagina you came out of.<p>I think that Jack Ma is erring to the former extreme here.
That's an odd quote because apparently Ma himself was already over 35 when he started Alibaba:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ma</a>