5.a 人人都能成功——鬼才相信

Make Time Your Friend 5.a: Everyone Can Succeed? Only a Fool Believes It

> By Li Xiaolai · 2008-05-19 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113151458/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/440.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

People believing absurd things has never been anything new. In fact, no matter how absurd a thing is, not only is there always someone who believes it, there are always many people who believe it. More interesting still, when absurdity becomes absurd to a certain degree, the number of believers may begin not only to increase in step with the degree of absurdity, but may increase dramatically, with the degree of absurdity as the exponent.

Striving for oneself and working diligently are things right and proper by nature, even if some people (note, only "some people") seem not to need to strive, and are even lazy to an enviable degree, yet can likewise enjoy everything that others couldn't get even by striving, working hard, even struggling. But the existence of this minority doesn't explain the whole problem.

There's a fact that is very simple yet hard to accept. All the resources of this world are not evenly distributed over every person in this world; the mathematical curve that can fairly closely represent this distribution is called the "normal distribution curve" (Normal Distribution Curve). Mathematics has always been the most precise tool for describing this world, unique to humans with relatively developed minds and constantly progressing and developing—one should hardly add "one of the" in front of that.

> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: an encyclopedia-style passage given as "further reading"; not Li Xiaolai's own words.] Further reading: The normal distribution is the most important distribution in probability theory. A great deal of practical and theoretical analysis shows that most random variables follow, or approximately follow, the normal distribution. For example, measurement errors, students' grades; people's height and weight; product quality data, investment returns and so on can all be considered to follow the normal distribution. The range of application of normally distributed random variables is so wide that it can be said no other random variable can compare with it; it occupies an extremely important place in mathematical statistics; many statistical methods still in common use today are built on the assumption that "the quantity being studied has, or approximately has, a normal distribution," and both experience and theory (the so-called "central limit theorem" in probability theory) show the reality of this assumption; many phenomena in the real world seem chaotic, yet within the chaos there exists a kind of order; research shows that if there are many random factors affecting some quantitative indicator, and each factor's effect is not very large, it can be proven in theory that the quantitative indicator follows the normal distribution.

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Imagine lining up all the people on Earth along the X axis, and projecting the sum of the various resources each of them owns onto the Y axis, with those who have the most standing in the middle and the rest lined up toward the two sides; then in the end it should be very close to this normal distribution curve. Very similar to our real world: only 1% of people are extremely poor in resources, and only 1% are extremely rich in resources; most people are at the middle level.

This natural "unevenness" in the distribution of resources seems simple and easy to understand, but in all times and places many people have refused to understand it and refused to accept it. They even refuse to use the word "uneven," and replace it with "unfair." In history, countless wars and countless plunders, seen in essence, were caused merely by understanding "even" as "fair." Understanding "uneven" as "unfair" lets one do as one pleases, righteously, under the banner of "justice."

Resources are limited to begin with; the wording in economics is "scarcity of resources" (Scarcity). Given the overall scarcity of resources, "resources are not evenly distributed," as it shows up in each person, directly results in "the great majority of people feel they don't have enough." In this world we live in, the scarcity of resources is an objective reality, and precisely because of this, people's subjective wishes certainly can't all be satisfied.

Understanding this phenomenon seems not difficult, but calmly accepting it after understanding it clearly is not so easy. Even today, people who can't accept it can be seen everywhere. For those who can't accept reality, actually only one choice is left, which is to escape.

Diogenes (Diogenes), who according to legend was born on the day Socrates was executed (around the third century BC) [Translator's note: so in the original; Socrates was executed in 399 BC, around the turn of the fourth century BC], when he became aware of the scarcity of resources, chose to escape by limiting his own subjective wishes. Diogenes [Translator's note: the original has a stray 的 after the name, which makes no sense; translated by the intended sense] said to this world, "Aren't you scarce in resources? Then I won't consume; if I have no desires, surely that's all right?" So he advocated purity of heart and few desires. When tired, he found a barrel at random and lived in it; when hungry, he went to the garbage heap to find some leftovers. He liked enjoyment too, but he could control himself and enjoy only so-called "consumption" that truly cost nothing—for example, basking in the sun. So he was once very impatient with Alexander, king of Macedon: "I wish you'd step aside and not block my sunlight," although that king had promised to grant him one wish.

More than two thousand years later, Karl Marx chose another form of escape: fantasy. He noticed the "unfair distribution" of resources (to be precise, it should be "uneven distribution"), but couldn't accept the fact that the distribution of resources has nothing to do with human nature. He believed that "the allocation of resources should be carried out under conditions most worthy of and most suited to human nature." After explaining his observations of the world with the "labor theory of value" and the "theory of surplus value," he began to fantasize, saying to this world: "Aren't you scarce in resources? Never mind; don't look at how it is now; sooner or later the day will come when goods will be extremely abundant; then people can each take what they need, with distribution according to work!" In fact, today, more than 120 years after Marx's death, goods are already relatively extremely abundant, but the fact we see is that goods are still scarce and still unevenly distributed, and the gap between rich and poor only tends to grow wider.

Modern Western economics originated in the doctrines of Adam Smith (Adam Smith, 1723 – 1790), was supplemented by David Ricardo (David Ricardo, 1772 – 1823), and it was only with John Maynard Keynes (John Maynard Keynes, 1883 –1946) that the scarcity of resources was squarely faced at last, holding that the fundamental purpose of economics lies in studying "how to use limited resources to the greatest effect"—in other words, studying how to raise "efficiency" on the premise of acknowledging the scarcity of resources.

Calmly and rationally accepting the reality of "scarcity of resources" is difficult beyond imagination, so much so that, looking at humanity as a whole, understanding and accepting this reality took nearly two thousand five hundred years—from Diogenes to Keynes.

And so-called "everyone can succeed" is obviously absurd. First, the resources each person has are not only limited but all different, even vastly different. Just imagine the extreme case:

1) all the methods advocated by "success studies" are completely correct;
2) everyone is able to carry out and implement those completely correct methods;

Yet even so, the result of everyone succeeding still can't come about. Because the premise that must be accepted is that "the resources each person has are not only limited but all different, even vastly different," so, in the end, after drawing each person's utility on a chart, it can still only be a normal distribution curve (just a curve with a higher bottom), and never a straight line like this:

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