We are living in a time where many people are searching for answers. These answers include how to have financial success. You have people looking up financial advisors who may advocate Financial Independence, Retire Early (F.I.R.E) or advocate that people should do trades or STEM, which is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. This is the advice that is frequently told today. If you want to have success, you have to follow that advice. But that is not simply true. There is one such individual that many people adhere to and choose to espouse such information, and that is Ben Shapiro.
Now I won’t go to much into his philosophy, but I will atleast state his ideas on how someone can become successful in the United States of America as this article is written. First, an individual should finish and graduate from highschool. Second, you need to get married before you have babies. Third, an individual should proceed to get a job, particularly a full-time job.
If you follow the advice given, then you should be able to have the success that you want in the United States of America and at least be comfortably middle class. This advice is often repeated by Ben and his supporters to illustrate that by following these steps, you can put yourself in a better position in life and not deal with many of the problems you have when you are poor and in poverty. I am here to say that this advice is inadequate and not sufficient. Let me expound and break down each factor.
Finish and Graduate High School
If you think about it, most people who have success in the world, no matter their occupation, most likely had graduated from high school. When you graduate from high school you open yourself to numerous opportunities. You can go to college. You can go to trade school. It is even possible for you to take a gap year and enjoy yourself.
Another reason to graduate is that you would garner more respect and accolades from people when you acquire yourself a high school diploma. Many organizations will not even consider you if you don’t have your high school diploma and even if you were to join an established business, you would be barred from rising the ranks within the business.
Finally, when you get your high school diploma, you essentially increased your overall knowledge base and skillset to have success in the world. The way you were during elementary school, is not same as middle school, nor is it the same as high school. Every academic level you go through, you change as a person to further help you become a more successful individual in the future. Now most people hear this advice and on the surface, it is great advice, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Rebuttal
If you do graduate high school, you acquire more opportunities, however those opportunities don’t stop at high school, but extend though tertiary education, which is education you acquire beyond high school. Colleges, universities, vocational schools, military training, all constitute tertiary education that is required for many people to have better success in life than simply having a high school diploma.
Second, acquiring a high school diploma may garner you some respect, however this can be misleading because most people do not really care about your diploma unless it involves an profession that requires that diploma to be needed. For instance, when a person orders pizza, do they care if their delivery driver has a high school diploma or not? Better yet, If you were to get a package delivered to your house, do most people care who exactly is delivering the package to your house? I don’t know who you are personally, but I would say that most people would say no!
Thirdly, your skillset and knowledge base can only take you so far, if and only if, your mindset allows you. What do I mean? There are people who did not graduate high school, went straight to having a job, get married, have kids, purchase a house, working 40 hours, on the job training, a promised pension all before the age of 25. Sounds insane right? Well that was the United States post World War 2 and many families were developed this way and still have success. Now why do I bring this up regarding skillset and knowledge base? Your mindset is going to be the determiner on how you shape your life. Even if you graduate high school, get a full time job, and get married, you can still be unsuccessful because your metric of success has changed as well as the environment changing that metric of success.
In all, you should get the high school diploma, but keep in mind that you will need to do a lot more for your own success.
You should get married before you have babies
This advice, I believe is what most people should follow. If you have babies out of wedlock, the child will most likely be in an unsafe environment. You may have a child that is going to be raised by a single parent, most likely a mother, and that child would not be able to get the proper guidance on how to behave themselves. The single parent could be at work all day with the child staying at home themselves. The child could get themselves hurt by their own choices while the parent is at their job. Or even worst, the parent can have a partner that may abuse that child. Obviously this happens in married relationships, however, this happens at a higher level in unmarried relationships.
Secondly, besides the baby or babies suffering, you have to realize that as an unmarried couple you still have to negotiate on how you are going to raise your children. If you are unmarried, you are most likely going to engage in an antagonistic relationship with your baby’s partner than a synergistic relationship to help develop your children.
Finally and for some is the most important, married couples provide better financial outcomes for their children than unmarried couples. Once again, I agree with all of the information provided but with some added caveats that can help you get the most out of the advice given.
Rebuttal
First, being raised by a single parent is not the only way to live in an unsafe environment, but you can still have a single parent raise a kid all by themselves if the other parent is away. Truck drivers, Surgeons, and other professions were someone is on the road all the time can hamper a child’s development similar to how an unmarried or absentee parent is not available. Sure the away parent is out and about giving resources to the family, but then question is “do you simply have to give money just to be a parent?” Most people will say no because parenting isn’t simply just about giving money but also about the nonfinancial benefits such as being there for your kid and partner.
Secondly, even with an antagonistic relationship with your former partner in raising your child, there will always be come synergistic and antagonistic way of raising your child. What if one partner believes in corporal punishment and the other does not? What if one partners decides to forfeit their duties as a provider and the household falls apart? Although married couples do better in this regard it is better to understand the structures that are put in place that can undermine the family unit.
Finally, married couple provide better financial opportunities to their children than unmarried couples. This is true, but here is a question to answer for yourself “Do people of means get married first or do people get married first then become people of means? Which is the best way?” Whether it is the former or the latter, many people believe in struggle love, where the couple struggles and eventually hit it big and then eventually they raise a family and live happily ever after. This is pushed quite a lot. The best thing to actually do is to start a successful business and then become married. Why? It is because you have more economic empowerment and not simply financial empowerment to help you and your family. If the partner needs a job, you hire them. If the partner needs some money, you give it to them.
Getting married before having kids is great advice, but there needs to be an economic focus on business to really have a successful marriage. It is often said that most marriages end in divorce because of finances, so it is important for you to develop your own business venture to have success in your life.
Get A Job
This is a repeated mantra at this point. You need to get a job. If you don’t get a job, you are a bum. You are useless. You are whatever pejorative that can be used to denigrate you. If you don’t have a job you basically do not have stability. You see it everywhere. People holding “will work for food” signs around intersections. College kids sending elaborate resumes and doing a dozen internships shows you that having a job is important.
Secondly, having a job gives you the structure you need to have success later in your life after you finish schooling. Seeing as though most people go through schooling during their own life, a job is a replacement for many to continue having that structure. Without that structure, many people would be aimless in life or even worst, destitute.
Thirdly, having a job provides numerous opportunities and pivots for an individual to become better in their craft. When you acquire a job you essentially elevate your position to further acquire more resources. With those resources, you acquire more opportunities to be more successful. With those job opportunities you can further extend your network, skillsets, knowledge base, and your mindset for your overall development. These are all excellent reasons why you should get a job. Unfortunately, similar to the advice given before, it is inadequate for your overall success.
Rebuttal
Job stability in many ways is an oxymoron. Although your job can give you income, it is not a guarantee that you will always have your job. Now that may seem obvious because you know firings happen, but what people don’t understand is that a person may have a job in terms of procession, but they may not have a job in terms of ownership. What does this mean exactly? You can be let go for any reason outside your control because your job does not belong to you, its belongs to the owners of the company.
When you hear about mass layoffs, they don’t simply fire the under performers, but they also sell the average performers and over performers as well. Even if you are the top employee in your group or division, the company will still fire you if it means the business keeps running. One thing to keep it mind is that this happens to all businesses.
No matter what business industry you are in, if you are an employee, your stability relies on your employer. If you mess up as an employee, you may only be hurting yourself. If the employer mess up, it hurts everyone down the line. There is no such thing as being rewarded for mere hard work like a participation trophy, but more so on output and results. If you see how people do the profession of sales, then you will understand what business is at the end of the day. This is why I repeat to people to start your own business.
Job Structure
Along with job security, job structure is linked to job security. As an individual, you condition yourself to have the job structure set up to optimize your living situation. Since you are conditioned this way, the structure of your life revolving around your job is also unstable. That is not to say you should quit your job, but to analyze on your financial, and more importantly your economic situation is predicated on an economic position that you don’t have that much control over. To have more control over your economic situation, you would want to start and run a successful business, but even that will require some tradeoffs.
Job Opportunities
Job opportunities are another phrase thats often repeated to promote the idea of getting more people to acquire a job. If you get a job, you have more money, you can rise in the business you are employed in, and you can help your family. All of this is true by the way. However, the best opportunity over a job will always be business entrepreneurship. You acquire more responsibilities, but you acquire more freedom as well.
When you only have a job, you have a limit on how much you make, the raises you acquire, little negotiating room, less benefits overall. When you have your own entrepreneurial venture you can make so much money in the front end that you may not even have to worry about making money ever again. You can even make so much money you can even give people F.I.R.E instead of people achieving F.I.R.E by themselves.
Getting a job is great advice, but starting a business is even better advice.
In all, Ben Shapiro ways of having success is good advice, but is lackluster in today’s world. You are going to have to put in more energy to acquire the success you wish for.
If you enjoyed this post, leave a comment. If you enjoyed the content of this site, read my previous post.
1 thought on “Ben Shapiro’s 3 Rules For Success Is Inadequate”