Well I hope you're not. But if you're young, and you can't seem to catch a break, you might subscribe to the mainstream narrative of systematic discrimination. That society is built such that your kind always gets the short of the stick.

But consider the possibility that that's not it. There is something out there keeping you down, but it's far less discriminatory, and you are even accountable for a large part of it.

You live in a system that's designed to make you want things. We paint the acquisition of things as virtue.

You started off by wanting one single thing, and then you're happy having it. But that didn't last long; now you want two more things to be happy. That's because the advertisement told you so, which include the covert ads carried by the logo engraved on your friend's newly bought thing, one which you now covet.

Your want now become a need. You don't want to live without it, so now you're paying $139.99 a month for it. That's on top eight more other items you absolutely also cannot live without.

From there, the more you need, the poorer you get.

But isn't this progress, you may say? What will the world come to if nobody wants anything? Won't economy grow if you hadn't wanted so much?

You would be right. The world progresses and grow at your expense. We thank you for being broke.

Now let me sidetrack to something you definitely don't care about if you're actually broke: civilization.

Can civilization advance without people desiring more? Is everyone supposed to be a monk now?

I think the right heuristic here are new products vs the new problems they create. A ratio of 1:0 means it has no downsides; a ratio of 1:1 is considered breakeven.

Wanting the wrong things would end up creating more problems than benefits.

Given that the world changes fast, it's not easy to discern what are the wrong things to want. The simplest strategy would be to want less; or at least adopt desires slowly and conservatively.

To that end, we've arrived at the very thing that makes you poor and keeps you that way: the media you consume.

The feed that you scroll is highly effectively at subtly suggesting things for you to want. It features peers who you thought you ought to live up to. Given enough time, you'd find something you cannot afford that you must pay for.

It's the algorithm's fault, you say. But you are the one who installed the app, and it's your thumb that's scrolling. Take some accountability.

What you consume, end up consuming you.