The rich see success as a matter of effort because they don’t actually have any obstacles beyond bothering to do a thing. “Feeling hungry? Then why don’t you just order something, you lazy shit!”

This leads to the natural conclusion, if you didn’t succeed that means you didn’t try. If you really tried, then how could you not have gotten what you want? It doesn’t make sense. You just need to try harder. Want it more. Force of will. Make the world bend to you.

This also ties into, I think. a reason that rich people are so bad with numbers and statistics and probability and so prone to magical thinking:

• They’re unused to the concept of wanting a thing and not getting it; it’s this binary thing. Either things are, or they aren’t.
• If things aren’t the way you want them, and if you’ve clearly wanted them enough to say you put in the effort, it’s because they’re being kept from you specifically, maliciously and for a reason.

So when you start talking about, like, 1 in 12 million odds, they’re like, GREAT! So it’s not impossible! And I’m a person who wants it, so it might as well be me, and it probably will be. Numbers mean nothing, because there’s nothing they can’t make happen through force of will.

Me, I’m not even used to having my basic needs met. I’m unused to knowing any sort of agency over my life, and have only ever felt ashamed to want anything for myself. The notion of anything turning out for me, with the odds as they are, has seemed too ludicrous to entertain. So put me in a room with a rich person, and just see the panic and disgust creep into their face. Am I serious? How can I exist? Oh no, I’m raising the wrong questions! I’m citing references! I’m one of those people! The unclean! I’m thinking poor! I’m going to infect them! Fuck fuck fuck! Stomp it! Get rid of it! Before it brings us all down with it!

I’m not speaking rhetorically, either. I’ve got… maybe a decade of intense experience here.