10. Unfair Advantage

Life is not fair.

Because of my family’s financial situation, I relied on tuition waivers for low- and middle-income households throughout my schooling. In college, with the help of classmates, I got meal vouchers for the campus dining hall, along with support from the alumni association. Even in a situation with relatively few resources, I was still fortunate enough to receive help from countless people, which made me who I am today.

I know that if I hadn’t been lucky enough, I wouldn’t have achieved what I have now.

I’ve seen many people who are exceptionally talented, but their circumstances or families held them back. They had to put in vastly more effort than others just to reach the exact same starting line.

The Inequity of Resources

In real-world society, resource distribution is often asymmetrical. Some people are born into quality education, affluent family backgrounds, and extensive social networks, while others must struggle with limited resources. This inequality isn’t just reflected in material conditions; it runs much deeper in access to opportunities.

I’ve noticed a few examples recently as friends around me begin to start families. Their abundant resources give their children plenty of opportunities to explore—music, English, sports, painting, you name it. They’ve had their parents’ devoted presence since childhood, and when college comes around, they get sent abroad to study and broaden their horizons, utterly crushing the competition right from the starting gate.

With the same working ability and the same level of effort, differences in origins and backgrounds can lead to completely divergent career trajectories. Some can easily land internships through family connections, while others need to work multiple times harder just to secure a single interview opportunity.

For a great read on this topic, I recommend an article by Denny—《Internet and Filial Allowance》.

Wealthy parents, on the other hand, feel that their children are still young and just starting out, so they still need help. They pass down their own social networks. When the next generation inherits these connections, they can continue to expand and solidify the web. If you step into society already knowing a bunch of “influential figures” with whom the previous generation spent decades cultivating relationships, it’s actually hard for your work and life not to go smoothly.

As the article mentions, with resources like that, it’s genuinely hard not to succeed.

Conversely, if you grew up in a toxic environment—being invalidated, ridiculed, bullied, and unsupported even by your own parents—then as an adult, you either lose your self-confidence entirely and never get it back, or you have to spend a tremendous amount of time trying to rebuild it. Either way, it’s a disadvantage.

Unfortunately, these things cannot be changed; we can only try our best to bridge the gap. Personally, I support UBI (Universal Basic Income), or any solution that can satisfy basic survival needs so people aren’t trapped in toxic environments or wasting huge amounts of time just trying to escape poverty.

Leveraging Your Unfair Advantage

The Unfair Advantage is a book that explains how we can leverage our own unfair advantages, starting with the MILES Framework, which stands for:

• M: Money
• I: Intelligence and Insight
• L: Location and Luck
• E: Education and Expertise
• S: Status

There’s no denying that all five of these require luck, but there are ways to break through the constraints. It aligns closely with what I wrote previously about increasing your luck surface area:

1. Keep learning: When resources are limited, knowledge and skills are the cheapest and most valuable investments (though for courses that cost tens of thousands of dollars, think twice first).
2. Proactively build networks: Take the initiative to connect with people from different backgrounds to broaden your horizons and opportunities. Every single conversation could become a turning point in your career.
3. Participate in activities: These could be clubs, hobby groups, meetups, and so on.
4. Seek mentorship: Look for seniors and mentors willing to guide those who come after them. Many people are genuinely happy to help promising young talent.
5. Embrace tolerance and empathy: Understanding that inequality exists doesn’t mean fighting against it blindly; it means understanding and accepting it with a more open mindset.

My family had no connections, no money, no notable background, and no prominent relatives. But my parents worked very hard to maintain an environment where I could study, giving me the opportunity to attend college in Taipei and broaden my horizons through that environment and the peers around me.

I was also fortunate enough to intern at a startup where I met many incredibly capable teammates. After graduating from high school, I began teaching myself Japanese. Because of the continuous self-study I accumulated throughout college, I already had a solid foundation when I moved to work in Japan, enough to handle both daily life and work here.

Unfair advantages apply in many contexts. For example, when someone in Taiwan wants to open a Stripe account, they need to first set up a virtual company and a bank account in the US. Being based in Japan, where Stripe is directly supported, I can set up a Stripe account at zero cost. This solves the biggest challenge for indie developers—payment processing—which is an unfair advantage in itself.

As long as you find the right track, everyone has unfair advantages to some degree. Some people are naturally tall, some are good-looking, some have pleasant voices. These are all unfair advantages we are born with; it’s simply a matter of discovering and putting them to good use.

Do you have any unfair advantages of your own? I’d love to hear about them ❤️