The System is Unfair. So What?
The system isn't fair
No matter what people put at the top of their value hierarchy, everyone has complaints about the system we live in. And most of the grievances are justified (to varying degrees). "The System" is a horrible, careless, malevolent and predatory monster.
Social systems
Some people have undoubtedly been disadvantaged through the small-mindedness of others. While I don't believe the nonsense that we live in systemically racist, sexist, society of bigots, I've seen the occasional instance of such stupid beliefs being acted out. Maybe this ugliness has negatively targeted you in your life. Doesn't matter if you're gay, lesbian, other, black, brown, red, yellow, woman or even gasp a white male. Someone hates you for things that A) aren't relevant to your character and B) you can't do a damn thing about. Problems can arise if they have the power to affect things in your life. It does happen, unfortunately.
The educational system in the US is horrible. Especially for the poor, who arguably need it the most. Hell, even the middle class is woefully underserved by public schools. 3.3% of all high school grads make minimum wage or less. And 78.3% of all minimum wage (or lower) workers have 12 years of government-run education - not particularly useful, it seems.
Money systems
The fiscal system is a disaster. Taxes are way too burdensome. The government takes somewhere between 20% to 40% of your hard-earned money uses it to fund overbearing regulatory agencies which make it more complex thus more difficult to run a business without being sued, fines or shutdown. Politicians also use it to pay for foreign meddling and unnecessary and immoral wars. In turn, they use the resulting instability and "humanitarian crises" as justification for spending more money to bring in more people, further burdening already unbalanced social programs.
If that isn't enough, those running the system also continue to use the seemingly ever-increasing security threats (provoked partly by the military agitation) to trumpet how we need more surveillance and more security on EVERYTHING. More of your money and more power goes to the unaccountable security apparatus - the NSA, the CIA, the DIA.
When government can't pay for it all, they create the money from nothing, besides the promise of repayment from your future labor. The Federal Reserve manipulates the monetary and banking system, dumping more and more dollars into circulation. The money you did manage to keep away from Uncle Sam and save for later erodes and buys you less. Son of a bitch.
Market-rigging is commonplace. Prices of this are suppressed, prices of that are inflated. It barely even matters whether by a cabal of malevolent forces or mindless hordes or algorithms chasing a buck.
What are you going to do about it?
Well, that depends. What are you going to do about what? What control do you have over the Federal Reserve, the EPA, the NSA? None. So don't do anything about he monster. It is a lot easier to improve yourself and your circumstances than it is to improve complex systems. Arguably that may be why so many people shy away and focus their energy toward the complex where responsibility is distributed and nebulous, and change is very hard to affect. If you took the responsibility of doing the things you feel you ought to be doing in your own life - by your own internal standards - you'd be in danger of instigating some real change.
Focus on your area of control
Direct your energy and attention to the things that you have influence over. This is a component of one of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Be proactive. This is nothing new. It's a very old and oft-repeated lesson. But it's so EASY to forget, or rather ignore, especially since we have SOOO much information available to us. The vast majority of that information has no impact on us directly (though we might rationalize how it does), is happening literally on the other side of the world and we have no control over it. It's really easy to absorb your attention into news, politics, movies, video games, cultural phenomena on a billion social media sites.
Reduce incoming noise
But attention is a LIMITED resource and you need to direct it toward your own ends. Tim Ferriss often talks about the low-information diet. If you are an info junkie (like I was), you should give it a try. Let your mind work at generating some output, rather than being a constant, semi-passive receiver. You might be surprised to find that you are already as informed as you need to be (for a while , anyway). You might also find that you have been itching for a chance to USE all the information you've been foraging for.
Start taking ACTION
The reason to stop focusing on all the external information is so you can A) turn your attention to improving your own station and B) so you can stop thinking of yourself as someone things happen to. Imbibing all that information is overwhelming and you feel like an observer, not an actor. I think this is the greatest downside of the Internet Age. It's far too easy to distract yourself and divert yourself from the path you feel you be working down. Once you have practiced clearing your mind of distractions, you can write that book you've been meaning to, start your website, flesh out the design of your product, whatever it is. TRY. Put as much effort as you possibly can forward, and be surprised by how little "the system" ACTUALLY ends up interfering.
It's a paper tiger
I have developed a suspicion over the past 10 years, not least from self-reflection on my own behavior, that people rail against the massive defects in the system to create an excuse for not even trying. Yes, there are problems. Some of them are very very bad. You will have to navigate them. But if you just sit on your ass and point at them, you will get exactly nowhere. If you wait for ideal conditions, you will be dead and dusted before you ever take your first step. If you spend all your time and energy trying to fix the system, you might make some improvements, but that time and effort goes a lot farther when you focus it on yourself. And once you've done that, you'll have more power, more leverage, more confidence, more sway, more resources if you want to take another crack at the system.
It should be noted before I conclude, that the system, flawed and broken as it is, is the reason that you have a phone or computer in front of you and a roof over your head. Because of the system, you aren't looking for berries in mud, or dead. So it has a tremendous amount of merit that shouldn't be ignored out of hand. Instead of focusing your attention on all the inadequacies in your environment, focus your action on making improvements in your own life. Ignore the system.
What?! But what about being an informed citizen?
Sure, agreed. That's important. But being an informed citizen has had it's meaning twisted. You do not need to be aware of the day-to-day drama of every business, politician, university or celebrity to be well-informed. In fact I'd argue you need NOT to. It doesn't do you any good personally, so you can do less good for your community, state, country et. al. Being an informed citizen means having principles, understanding history, economics, philosophy. It's a lot MORE investment than following news feeds, but a lot LESS exhausting and attention-demanding.
So what to do?
Start setting concrete goals and taking action toward them. Maybe you want to have $1,000 in the bank. Maybe $10,000. Or you want to bring your net worth up to $100,000 or generate $1,000 of passive income each month. These thing are all IMMINENTLY achievable and are going to have a hell of a lot more impact on your life now and into the distant future than knowing EVERYTHING about whose apple cart Trump flipped over today, or the Federal Reserve meeting minutes.
Consider this your call to action. Get out there and start slaying dragons.
We'd love to hear your success stories, or where you have struggled, so that others may learn.
Original article and more here: http://www.trillionairesclub.net/unfair-system/