The Donkey Climbing the Stairs

When merit isn't enough

Every society teaches its children that ability matters.

Work hard. Prepare yourself. Do your best. If you are good enough, you will have a chance.

Then, sooner or later, many of us discover the uncomfortable truth: merit can open a door, but it does not always decide who gets through it.

Sometimes the door opens for the person who knows someone.

Sometimes it stays closed for the person who was better prepared.

Sometimes the rules are followed exactly as written—and yet the outcome still feels profoundly unfair.

That realization can arrive early in life. Mine did.

I was eight years old.

The story behind the poem

Two boys I knew had attended the same school. Both were capable and well prepared. One had connections that helped him move forward and eventually reach the Military Academy in Modena.

The other was rejected during the selection process after a medical examination identified a physical problem.

What stayed with me was not simply that one succeeded and the other failed.

It was the suspicion that the difference between them had not been their ability.

If someone cannot defeat you on preparation, there is always another way to stop you.

I was only eight, so I had no vocabulary for what I was witnessing. I didn't know about cronyism, patronage, social networks, or what I would later call relational capital.

I only knew that something wasn't right.

Years later, that memory became the starting point for the first poem I ever wrote: The Donkey Climbing the Stairs.

The title came from the absurdity of the image itself: a donkey somehow climbing stairs while someone who actually knows how to climb is left behind.

Injustice becomes different when it happens to someone you know

As a child, I had already been deeply disturbed by images of historical violence.

I remember seeing films depicting the massacres of Native Americans by the U.S. cavalry. I remember images of Nazi concentration camps and the horrors inflicted on prisoners.

Those events were immense. They belonged to history, to distant places and distant generations.

But the story of those two boys was different.

It wasn't history.

It was my world.

I knew the boy who moved forward. I knew the boy who was stopped.

That makes injustice harder to look away from.

Perhaps this is where our sense of justice really begins—not with political theory or moral philosophy, but with the first moment when we look at something happening in front of us and instinctively think:

This is not right.

Privilege rarely looks dramatic

As I grew older, I realized that favoritism does not always announce itself with a major political scandal or a coveted public job.

Sometimes it is much smaller.

A connection that moves someone ahead on a waiting list.

A phone call that gets an appointment sooner.

A professional who makes an exception.

A favor that is quietly returned.

A door that opens because someone knows the person on the other side.

None of these things, taken separately, seems capable of changing a society.

But societies are not shaped only by spectacular acts of corruption.

They are also shaped by thousands of ordinary exceptions.

The problem begins when the formal rules remain equal while access to those rules becomes unequal.

The law may be the same for everyone. The path through it may not be.

The child who wanted justice

When I wrote The Donkey Climbing the Stairs, I had no theory of power.

I wasn't trying to explain Italian society.

I wasn't writing about political parties or ideology.

I was simply trying to give a shape to something that had disturbed me as a child.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder how much of that eight-year-old boy is still inside me.

Because growing older changes our relationship with justice.

Children tend to believe that if something is wrong, someone should fix it.

Adults learn that the world is much harder to repair.

We discover that injustice is not an exception to human history. It is one of its recurring features.

We discover that we cannot fight every battle.

And eventually we face a more uncomfortable question:

What do you do when you realize that the world will not necessarily become fair?

The Zealot, the Pharisee, and the Sadducee

I have sometimes imagined three possible answers.

The first is the Zealot: the person who continues fighting injustice wherever he encounters it, regardless of the personal cost.

The second is the Pharisee, in my own contemporary interpretation of the figure: someone who publicly presents himself as a defender of justice, but may eventually turn that struggle into a career, a social identity, or a source of power.

And then there is the Sadducee.

The Sadducee, as I imagine him, has a different ambition.

He doesn't want to save the world.

He wants to reach a position where the world can no longer determine his fate.

He settles his own grievances. He secures his own position. He makes himself sufficiently strong, connected, or independent that he no longer needs society to be fair to him.

There is something undeniably cynical about that position.

But it raises an uncomfortable question:

Is open self-interest more honest than pretending that personal ambition is a universal cause?

I don't have a final answer.

Perhaps because I still contain all three figures.

The child who wanted justice.

The adult who understands power.

And the man who sometimes wonders whether the safest way to escape injustice is not to defeat it, but to become strong enough that it can no longer reach you.

What happens when justice is no longer guaranteed?

Maybe growing up does not mean losing our belief in justice.

Maybe it means discovering that justice is not guaranteed.

From there, people choose different paths.

Some keep fighting.

Some adapt.

Some enter the system hoping to change it.

Some enter the system because they want a share of its advantages.

And some eventually decide that their only realistic goal is to protect themselves.

I still don't know which path I will ultimately take.

But I know where the question began.

It began with two boys.

One kept climbing.

The other was stopped.

And somewhere behind that memory is an eight-year-old child who did not yet know the words clientelism, privilege, or relational capital.

He didn't need them.

He only needed to see an injustice.

And perhaps that is the strange thing about growing older:

we spend years learning the language to describe what a child can recognize in a single moment.

The Privilege of Not Needing a Favor

Can you make it in life without connections?

Yes.

Millions of people do it every day.

They study. They work. They apply. They get rejected. They try again. They move to another city. They change careers. They build businesses from scratch. They take exams, lose opportunities, and keep going until eventually something works.

No powerful friend makes a call.

No family name opens the door.

No one whispers their name into the right ear.

And yet they move forward.

We tend to forget these people because their success doesn't make a good story.

In a culture obsessed with connections, it's much more satisfying to believe that everyone who gets ahead must know someone.

It isn't true.

But there is an important distinction we rarely make.

Connections are not the same thing as favors.

Knowing people matters. Reputation matters. Networking matters. A trusted introduction can change a career.

If someone tells an employer, “You should meet this person. They're smart, reliable, and good at what they do,” that's not necessarily corruption or nepotism.

That's a recommendation.

Someone is putting their reputation behind you.

If you fail, they may lose credibility too.

That's very different from saying:

“Hire this person. They're one of ours.”

The first opens a door.

The second can bypass the test.

And that's where the uncomfortable question begins.

What is a person worth when someone else's influence has to substitute for their own ability?

That's why, in the most negative sense of the word, the person who lives entirely by favors is not necessarily the privileged one.

They may actually be the most dependent person in the room.

A favor can become a debt

This is the part nobody likes to talk about.

A favor doesn't always come with a contract.

Sometimes it comes with memory.

“I got you in.”

“Don't forget who helped you.”

“I made that call for you.”

Maybe nobody ever asks for anything in return.

But you remember.

And because you remember, you may feel obligated.

That's the hidden cost of being handed an opportunity.

The job may be yours.

But the favor belongs to someone else.

And that can become a strange kind of psychological debt.

The person who helped you may eventually need something from you.

A vote.

A signature.

A phone call.

A favor of their own.

And suddenly what looked like privilege starts to look like dependence.

Some professions don't tolerate incompetence for long

There are careers where connections can get you an opportunity but cannot manufacture competence.

A doctor may be introduced by a powerful person, but patients still need treatment.

A surgeon may come from a prominent family, but nobody can operate on a patient for them.

A pilot may have influential parents, but an airplane still has to land safely.

An engineer may have an impressive network, but a bridge does not stay standing because of someone's last name.

A lawyer may get an introduction to a prestigious firm, but eventually they have to know the law.

A scientist may get access to a laboratory through a connection, but the research still has to survive scrutiny.

The same is true in countless ordinary professions.

A contractor can get a job through a friend. An electrician can be recommended by a neighbor. A consultant can get a meeting because someone knows them.

But if they consistently do bad work, people eventually find out.

A connection can open the door. It cannot permanently negotiate with reality.

The real test comes later

That's why the most revealing moment isn't when someone gets the job.

It's what happens afterward.

The boss changes.

The company changes.

The political climate changes.

The person who made the introduction retires.

The powerful friend loses influence.

The family name no longer carries the same weight.

And suddenly there is no one left to make the call.

Then comes the question that cannot be avoided:

What can you actually do on your own?

If the answer is “a lot,” then perhaps the connection was simply an introduction.

If the answer is “not much,” then the connection didn't build a career.

It only postponed the moment when the person would have to prove themselves.

The family that refused to use its power

I once came across the story of an important, well-connected family that could easily have used its influence to establish its children.

They knew the right people.

They had the social standing.

They had access to doors that most people would struggle even to find.

They could have made the calls.

They could have asked for favors.

They could have kept their children close and placed them comfortably within the family's own professional and social circle.

Instead, they did something almost counterintuitive.

They sent their children away.

Away to study.

Away to build professional networks.

Away from the environment where their last name already meant something.

Not because the family lacked influence.

Precisely because it had influence.

They understood something many powerful families don't.

Every favor creates the possibility of an obligation.

Every shortcut can become a form of dependency.

And sometimes the greatest gift you can give your children is not a door you can open for them.

It's the freedom to discover whether they can open one themselves.

There is dignity in starting somewhere nobody knows your name

Imagine walking into a room where nobody knows your father.

Nobody knows your mother.

Nobody knows your family.

Nobody cares who your friends are.

Your last name means nothing.

Your résumé has to speak for itself.

Your work has to speak for itself.

Your character has to speak for itself.

It can be harder.

It can be slower.

You may fail.

You may have to start again.

But if you eventually succeed, something belongs entirely to you.

Not the opportunity, perhaps.

Not the circumstances.

But the reputation you built afterward.

And that is a kind of wealth that cannot be inherited.

Social capital isn't the problem

This is where the debate about networking and privilege often becomes simplistic.

We shouldn't pretend that relationships don't matter.

They do.

Nobody succeeds entirely alone.

Everyone benefits from teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends, clients, partners, and people willing to vouch for them.

That's human society.

The problem begins when relationships stop amplifying merit and start replacing it.

That's the line.

A good network can make your abilities visible.

A favor can make an unqualified person look qualified.

A strong reputation can create opportunities.

Nepotism can create positions.

Those are not the same thing.

And perhaps the healthiest form of social capital is not having hundreds of powerful people you can call.

It's knowing that you could call them—and choosing not to.

Some people would rather owe themselves

There are people who simply don't like owing anyone.

They would rather work harder.

They would rather wait.

They would rather move.

They would rather send out a hundred résumés.

They would rather fail an exam and take it again.

They would rather hear “no” ten times than know that their “yes” came from someone else's influence.

Not because they're morally superior.

Not because they're naïve.

Because they want something very simple:

to know that what they have is theirs.

That's why I find the story of that family so interesting.

They had the power to make life easier for their children.

Instead, they used their power to give their children distance from that power.

They didn't necessarily make their children richer.

They made them more independent.

And independence may be the most valuable inheritance of all.

The freedom to say: I did this myself

Perhaps that's the real difference between social capital and dependency.

Social capital says:

“Let me introduce you.”

Dependency says:

“Let me get you in.”

Social capital says:

“Someone should know about your work.”

Dependency says:

“Don't worry about whether you're qualified.”

One creates opportunity.

The other can create entitlement.

One can strengthen a person.

The other can leave them permanently dependent on the person who opened the door.

So yes, you can live without connections.

It may take longer.

It may be harder.

It may not always be fair.

But it is possible.

And there is a particular kind of freedom in being able to look at your life and say:

Nobody got this for me.

Maybe somebody gave you advice.

Maybe somebody introduced you.

Maybe somebody believed in you.

That's fine.

But you did the rest.

You built the skills.

You earned the reputation.

You survived the failures.

You stayed when it got difficult.

And when the powerful people disappear, when the phone stops ringing, when nobody is there to put in a good word, you still have something left.

You.

Maybe that's not the shortest road to success.

But when you finally get there, you don't owe the destination to anyone.

When You’re Born Outside the Networks: Building Your Own Life When Nobody Hands You the Keys

Let’s take our discussion of social capital one step further by imagining the life of a person who is born into a modest family, grows up on the outskirts of a less-developed region, and, despite having personal abilities, education, and ambition, spends his entire life dealing with a social network that is much weaker than the one other people inherit.

Let’s say his family isn’t completely without assets. Perhaps they are a family of small property owners, people who own a home and maybe a few other modest assets, but who have never built a particularly strong social network. And the problem isn’t necessarily that they don’t know anyone. The real problem is that those relationships are not necessarily made available to everyone in the family.

Inside the extended family, there may be intense competition, but there can also be something subtler and perhaps even more common: the tendency to keep useful contacts for oneself.

An uncle might know an influential person, have a valuable professional connection, know an executive, a business owner, a politician, or someone who could provide access to an opportunity. Yet that connection is used for his own children, his daughter-in-law, or his son-in-law. When it comes to helping the child of a brother or sister, a niece, or a nephew, suddenly the family relationship seems to lose all its value.

It is almost as if, within the same family, there are several smaller families, each one concerned with protecting and advancing only its own branch.

Our protagonist therefore grows up in a situation where the family name and bloodline give him a sense of belonging, but not necessarily access to opportunities.

And that distinction is crucial.

Because a family can be large and, at the same time, possess very little shared social capital.

Eventually, this person studies, acquires skills, develops expertise, and tries to build a better life. But when he starts looking around, he realizes that something doesn’t add up. He discovers that talent does not automatically translate into social mobility. He understands that there is a gap between being capable and being able to turn your abilities into opportunities.

And this is precisely where marriage enters the picture.

Not, however, in the way we normally think about social climbing.

Our protagonist does not use marriage as a social elevator.

He does not look for a wife from a wealthier family. He does not look for a husband from a higher social class. He does not choose a partner because of the family name, wealth, connections, or social access that person might bring into his life.

Instead, imagine that he falls in love and marries someone who actually comes from an even more modest background than his own.

If he comes from a family of small property owners, she might come from a family of renters. If his family owns at least a home, hers might have spent their entire lives renting. If he inherits a few modest assets, she may bring virtually nothing into the marriage in terms of wealth or social connections.

From the standpoint of social mobility, therefore, this marriage does not represent a move upward.

And that matters because it shows that not everyone experiences marriage as a strategy for social advancement.

For our protagonist, marriage is simply marriage. It is the decision to build a life with someone he loves, not a strategy for entering a more powerful family.

But precisely because of this, he gives up—consciously or unconsciously—one of the ways in which people have historically expanded their social capital.

He does not acquire a wealthier family.

He does not inherit new connections.

He does not automatically enter a higher professional environment.

He does not suddenly find himself surrounded by people who can open doors for him.

His marriage may be perfectly happy and, at the same time, completely neutral from the standpoint of social mobility.

And that distinction is worth emphasizing, because it allows us to separate two things that are often confused: the success of a life and the success of a social-mobility strategy are not necessarily the same thing.

At this point, our protagonist may try to compensate for this lack through other avenues.

He might turn to politics.

But even there, he may encounter a particular problem. Imagine that he lives in a region where the major institutions are controlled by a political camp completely different from his own.

He might be a person on the political left living in a region governed by the right—or, conversely, someone on the right living in an area governed by the left.

If he wants to participate in politics because he genuinely believes in its ideas, of course he can support the opposition. But if his goal is also to build a network capable of generating professional or institutional opportunities, the situation becomes more complicated.

Not because people in the opposition are incapable of helping anyone. They certainly can. But when someone is looking for opportunities that depend, directly or indirectly, on institutions, proximity to those who actually hold power can become an important resource.

And this is where a very particular temptation can emerge: pretending to belong to an environment in which you do not actually recognize yourself.

He might join a political party, spend time in its circles, build relationships with people in that political camp—not because he has changed his beliefs, but because he hopes that proximity will eventually lead to a recommendation or an opportunity.

At that point, however, the issue is no longer simply social.

It becomes a question of identity.

How much is a person willing to sacrifice in order to build social capital?

Is he willing to pretend to be someone he is not?

And above all, if he has to give up his convictions in order to obtain an opportunity, what has he really gained when that opportunity finally arrives?

It is possible that this contradiction will convince him not to use politics as his primary vehicle for advancement.

He may decide that he does not want to be anyone’s client.

He does not want to spend his entire life owing something to a politician.

He does not want someone to be able to remind him forever that his success came through their favor.

And so another, much harder path remains: building an independent network.

Not entering someone else’s network, but creating his own.

Here too, however, he may run into a problem.

He can try joining associations, clubs, organizations, communities, and established groups. He may even look toward much more closed organizations, including those commonly associated in the public imagination with Freemasonry, paramasonic groups, or restricted forms of membership.

But even then, there is no guarantee that the organization exists to advance his goals.

An established structure already has its own hierarchy, its own history, and, above all, people who arrived before him.

And so something apparently paradoxical can happen: he joins an organization because he hopes to receive help, only to discover that before he can receive anything, he has to help those above him.

He has to work for the group.

He has to prove his loyalty.

He has to contribute to the prestige of the people occupying higher positions.

And perhaps, after years have passed, he discovers that the social capital he has accumulated is not really his own. It belongs to the leader, the senior figure, the president, the mentor, or whoever happened to occupy the top of the hierarchy when he arrived.

He entered thinking he would use the network and discovers that he has become one of the network’s resources.

There is no need to imagine conspiracies to understand this dynamic. It is enough to observe how human hierarchies normally work.

And so our protagonist may reach a conclusion: perhaps he needs to build a network that is entirely his own.

The problem is that this is the slowest path.

Social capital cannot be built at the same speed as money. Trust takes time because people first have to get to know you, then understand how you behave, and finally have reasons to trust you and introduce you to other people.

You can decide today to build a network, but you cannot expect to have a community of fifty people willing to support you tomorrow.

Social capital grows slowly, through years of encounters, cooperation, reliability, and reciprocity.

And this creates a particularly difficult situation for someone who starts late.

A person may realize at forty that he needs a stronger network, but he cannot immediately make up for the twenty years of relationships that someone else inherited from their family.

At that point, he may begin thinking about changing his environment.

He may start thinking about geographic mobility.

If opportunities are scarce where he grew up, perhaps he can go somewhere where there are more of them. If the region he lives in is characterized by narrow networks heavily shaped by family ties, perhaps he can look for an environment where relationships are more numerous and the possibilities for building a new reputation are greater.

In a small community, everyone may know who you are, yet nobody may really need what you can do.

In a larger environment, the opposite may happen: nobody knows you, but someone may need exactly the skills you possess.

And this is where moving can become a form of social mobility.

Not because changing cities automatically makes someone richer or more important, but because it changes the environment in which their abilities are tested.

The problem is that even this option may be unavailable.

Imagine that our protagonist has elderly family members who depend on him.

This is not simply an emotional bond. It is a concrete responsibility. If there is no one else available to take care of them, moving to another region may become practically impossible.

And so a paradox emerges.

He knows that he might have more opportunities elsewhere, but he cannot leave.

He knows he needs to build a network, but building one will take years.

He does not want to use marriage as a way into a higher social class.

He does not want to turn his political beliefs into a bargaining chip.

He does not want to surrender himself to an existing organization.

And he cannot simply pack a suitcase and start over somewhere else.

At this point, we are no longer talking about someone who is simply “not trying hard enough.”

We are looking at someone who begins from a position in which many of the conventional paths to social mobility are simultaneously weak or closed.

And perhaps this is precisely where the concept of social capital reveals its real importance.

Because inequality is not only about what you own.

It is also about who you know, who knows you, who is willing to introduce you to someone else, and how large the social world is in which you are able to move.

Our protagonist did not inherit a strong network. He did not acquire one through marriage. He does not want to obtain it through political or organizational affiliation, and he cannot easily change his geographic environment.

So he is left with a much slower, but also much freer, path: building his own network.

And this is where the question becomes genuinely interesting.

The issue is no longer simply how to advance professionally.

It is how a person can build a social environment in which their abilities finally have the chance to produce opportunities.

Perhaps they will have to build that network through their work, culture, the internet, personal projects, writing, and random encounters that, over the years, become friendships, collaborations, and new connections.

They may have to do something nobody ever taught them to do: stop waiting for someone to introduce them into someone else’s world and start building a small world of their own—one that, eventually, other people will want to enter.

Because in the end, the problem is not simply escaping your social class.

The problem is escaping the social network you were assigned at birth when that network is not strong enough to accompany you toward the life you want to build.

And perhaps real emancipation begins at the moment a person realizes that they do not necessarily have to become part of someone else’s network.

They can try to become, slowly, the point from which a new network begins to form.

It will not be easy.

It will not be fast.

And there is no guarantee that it will work.

But at least, for the first time, that person will no longer be looking for someone to open a door for them.

They will be building a house with doors they can eventually open for other people, too.

Relational Capital: In Life, It’s Not Just Who You Are — It’s Who You Know

We’ve been told a beautiful story our entire lives.

Study hard.

Work hard.

Become good at what you do.

Make something of yourself.

And sooner or later, your time will come.

That is the promise of a meritocratic society: if you have enough talent and determination, you can move up.

But there’s a question I’ve often found myself asking:

Move up where? And more importantly, who opens the door for you?

Because the more I observe society, the more I realize that there is a form of wealth we talk about far less than money, real estate, and financial assets.

It’s called relational capital.

Put simply, relational capital is the wealth contained in the people you know, the families you belong to, the circles you move in, and the relationships you can draw on when you need something.

It doesn’t mean having a lot of friends.

You can know half the city and have almost no social influence. Or you can know a handful of people and be part of a network capable of opening doors that remain firmly closed to everyone else.

And that’s where things get interesting.

You Can Have a Great Résumé and Still Have No One to Call

Imagine two young people with the same degree, roughly the same level of education, and the same desire to work.

One graduates and starts sending out résumés. Ten, then fifty, then a hundred. He waits for calls, goes to interviews, gets rejected, and starts over.

The other has a father who knows a business owner. His father makes a phone call. The business owner makes another call. A few days later, an interview is waiting.

Someone might say, “Well, maybe the second person was actually better.”

Maybe.

But that misses the point.

The difference appeared before either person had a real chance to prove their merit.

One had to go looking for an opportunity.

The other already had someone pointing him toward one.

And that may be one of the most underestimated differences in our society.

Not everyone starts from the same line.

And some people don’t even know where the starting line is.

Relational Capital Is Inherited

What I find even more interesting is that relationships, just like money and cultural capital, can be passed from one generation to the next.

A child might grow up in a family where the father knows the local business owner, an uncle is a professional, a cousin works in banking, a family friend is an executive, and an old schoolmate of the parents now holds an influential position.

That child probably doesn’t think of any of this as wealth.

To them, it’s simply normal life.

They grow up watching people meet, phone calls being made, favors being returned, invitations arriving, doors opening.

Without even realizing it, they learn how that world works.

Another kid can be just as intelligent and just as capable, yet grow up completely outside that network.

As an adult, that person first has to discover that such a world exists, then figure out how to get into it, and finally find someone willing to recognize them.

One person was given a map.

The other has to draw the map while walking.

And then someone has the nerve to say the first person got further because they simply worked harder.

There Are Families That Are More “Family” Than Others

You can see this very clearly in small towns.

You don’t need to live in New York, London, or Washington.

You don’t even need to be in a major city.

Spend enough time in a small town and watch how people interact.

Sooner or later, you notice something.

Some families are more “family” than others.

Not necessarily because they have more money.

Maybe they simply have a longer history, a familiar name, an established position, relationships built over decades.

They are the families that always seem to know someone.

If you need a professional, they know someone.

If a business is starting up, they know someone.

If there’s a problem, they know someone.

If you need access to a particular social circle, they know someone who can introduce you.

And when they don’t personally know the right person, they know someone who knows someone.

That is the power of a network.

You don’t have to know everyone.

You just have to know enough people to be able to reach almost anyone through them.

And Then There’s Marriage

This is where the subject becomes even more uncomfortable, because now we’re talking about something deeply personal: choosing a partner.

For centuries, families understood perfectly well that marriage wasn’t simply the union of two individuals.

It was also the union of two families, two fortunes, and—perhaps most importantly—two networks of relationships.

Today, we like to think that all of this belongs to the past and that marriage is simply about love.

And of course, love matters.

But it would be naïve to ignore the fact that we still tend to meet people within the environments we already inhabit.

We attend certain schools, universities, workplaces, clubs, restaurants, neighborhoods, and social circles.

And so, almost inevitably, we meet people who come from worlds similar to our own.

No conspiracy is necessary.

Nobody has to decide from above who should marry whom.

It’s enough for society to be organized into circles.

And when two people get married, it isn’t always just two individuals who come together.

Two networks meet.

Two families.

Two sets of assets.

Two reputations.

Two groups of connections.

And sometimes those two networks merge into something considerably more powerful than either one was before.

That’s Why Some People Would Rather Stay Single

There’s an interesting behavior that can seem strange if we look at relationships only through the lens of romance.

Some people would rather remain single than enter a relationship with someone they perceive as being too far removed from their own social environment.

It isn’t always snobbery.

Sometimes it’s simply an unconscious awareness that a relationship can change your position within society.

A partner can bring you into a new world—or pull you away from one.

They can introduce you to new people.

They can change how others perceive you.

They can even change the opportunities available to you.

And above all, they can shape the social environment in which your children will grow up.

At that point, marriage is no longer simply a private matter.

Whether we like it or not, it can also become one of the mechanisms through which social capital is passed on to the next generation.

The Social Elevator Isn’t Free

This is where the rhetoric of social mobility starts to crack.

We imagine the social elevator as something public.

You walk in.

You press the button.

You go upstairs.

But maybe society is more like a huge building filled with doors.

The elevator exists.

The problem is getting into the building.

And, more importantly, getting inside.

Because you can have talent, education, and ambition, but if you don’t know anyone and don’t even know where to knock, an enormous amount of your energy will be spent simply trying to find the entrance.

That’s the part of meritocracy we talk about the least.

Merit may help you win the race, but first you have to be allowed into the race.

And not everyone gets the same invitation.

The Power of a Phone Call

Think about a simple sentence:

“I’ll introduce you to someone.”

It sounds like almost nothing.

But it can completely change the situation.

Because when someone introduces you, they transfer a little of their own credibility to you.

I know you.

You know him.

I believe you’re someone worth listening to.

So I’ll introduce you.

From that moment on, you’re no longer a complete stranger.

That is relational capital.

It’s the phone call made before the résumé is sent.

It’s the dinner you were invited to.

It’s the group chat someone added you to.

It’s the professional who introduces you to another professional.

It’s someone saying, “I know your father.”

It’s, “Aren’t you so-and-so’s son?”

These sound like ordinary phrases.

But behind them there may be thirty, fifty, or even a hundred years of family history.

The Real Wealth of the Elite

Maybe we should stop thinking about elites simply as people who have a lot of money.

Their real wealth may be something far less visible.

It may be the list of people they can call.

A house can be sold.

A company can go bankrupt.

A bank account can be emptied.

A relationship built over decades, however, can continue generating opportunities.

One person introduces you to another.

That person brings you into another circle.

There, you meet more people.

One of them offers you an opportunity.

The opportunity generates money.

Money generates status.

Status gives you access to new circles.

And those circles generate new relationships.

The cycle feeds itself.

And perhaps this is how relational capital slowly turns into financial capital.

And What About the People Outside?

This is where we reach the part I find most uncomfortable.

People who are born outside these networks often have to build three things at the same time:

skills, money, and relationships.

Someone born inside a network may inherit at least part of all three.

That doesn’t mean their life will be easy.

It doesn’t mean they are incompetent.

It doesn’t even mean they won’t have to work hard.

It simply means that when they arrive at a door, they may already know someone on the other side.

And that is an enormous advantage.

Because one person may spend ten years building a network that another person received for free at birth.

The Capital You Can’t See

Perhaps that is precisely why relational capital is so difficult to recognize.

It doesn’t show up in a bank account.

It isn’t listed on a résumé.

You can’t see it in someone’s apartment.

It doesn’t have a stock-market price.

And yet it can follow a person throughout their entire life.

It’s knowing who to call.

It’s being recognized.

It’s being invited.

It’s having someone willing to say, “Come with me. I’ll introduce you.”

It’s having a last name someone recognizes.

It’s being able to walk into a room where other people don’t even know the meeting is taking place.

And perhaps that is the real difference between someone who possesses relational capital and someone who doesn’t.

The person without it has to search for opportunities.

The person who has it is often told that the opportunities exist.

In the End, It’s Not Just Who You Are

I’m not saying merit doesn’t exist.

I’m not saying everything is controlled by families.

I’m not saying every wealthy person is a beneficiary of nepotism and every poor person is a misunderstood genius.

Reality is much more complicated.

I’m saying something much simpler.

When we judge someone’s success, we usually see only the final result.

We see the successful professional, the entrepreneur, the politician, the executive, the prosperous family.

We don’t see all the people that person met along the way.

We don’t see the doors that opened.

We don’t see the introductions.

We don’t see the advice they received.

We don’t see the relational capital accumulated before that person ever began building their financial wealth.

So perhaps the question shouldn’t simply be:

“How much is this person worth?”

Maybe we should also ask:

“How much is the network they belong to worth?”

Because in life, we can inherit a house.

We can inherit money.

We can inherit a business.

But we can also inherit something far more subtle:

the people our parents know.

And maybe, in the end, the real social elevator isn’t the one that takes you from the ground floor to the top floor.

It’s the one that lets you meet the people who own the elevator.

The Great Lie of Self-Help: They Teach You How to Run, But Not Who Starts Ahead

For decades, someone has been telling us how to become successful.

The names change. The books change. The motivational gurus come and go. But the promise remains essentially the same:

If you work hard enough on yourself, you can change your life.

Dale Carnegie taught us how to win friends and influence people. Napoleon Hill taught us to think and grow rich. Then came the modern motivational industry: personal development programs, life coaches, seminars, neuro-linguistic programming, visualization, manifestation, positive thinking, and an entire economy built around the idea that our destiny is, at least to a large extent, in our own hands.

So we learned to set goals.

Wake up at five in the morning.

Take cold showers.

Write down our goals every day.

Stand in front of the mirror and tell ourselves that we are destined for success.

Raise our standards.

Coach ourselves.

Eliminate negative people.

Visualize the life we want.

Believe in the law of attraction.

The problem is that this may be only half the story.

Because there is a question the self-help industry rarely puts front and center:

What happens when someone works relentlessly on themselves but starts from a completely different position than the people already at the top?

Not Everyone Starts at the Same Starting Line

Imagine two people.

They have the same talent, the same ambition, and the same discipline.

One is born into a financially secure family. If they lose their job, their parents can help. If they want to start a business, the family might be able to provide seed money. If an investment goes wrong, someone can help them recover. If they want to enter a particular professional circle, they may already know someone who can introduce them to the right people.

The other person has none of that.

If they lose their job, they may not be able to pay the rent.

If they start a business and fail, they may end up deeply in debt.

If they decide to change careers at forty, there may be no family willing to finance two years of transition.

If they make the wrong decision, there may be nobody behind them to catch them.

And yet both people are given exactly the same advice:

"You need to be more courageous."

Really?

Maybe the problem isn't always a lack of courage.

Sometimes it's the amount of protection available while you're taking the risk.

The Real Privilege May Be the Ability to Take Risks

This is one of the things the self-help industry doesn't talk about nearly enough.

Taking risks is much easier when you can afford to lose.

Someone from a wealthy family can take an unpaid internship, move to another city, attend an expensive graduate program, launch a company, invest in a risky project, or walk away from a mediocre job.

Why?

Because if things go badly, there may be a safety net.

Not necessarily a conspiracy.

Not necessarily anything illegal.

Sometimes it's simply a family.

A house.

A trust fund.

A loan.

A connection.

A piece of advice.

An introduction.

An opportunity.

A second chance.

The difference can be enormous.

For someone without that network, the same mistake can have far more serious consequences.

And suddenly, the famous advice to "get out of your comfort zone" takes on a very different meaning.

For some people, leaving their comfort zone means giving up convenience.

For others, it means risking financial ruin.

The Invisible Network

The difference becomes even more significant when we look across generations.

A family that has spent decades inside the same professional or social environment accumulates something that doesn't necessarily appear on a balance sheet.

Social knowledge.

They know how certain institutions work.

They know whom to call.

They know who matters.

They understand the language of particular professional circles.

They know the unwritten rules.

They know which opportunities exist before they become widely visible.

They know which mistakes to avoid.

And, most importantly, they pass that knowledge on to their children.

This is a form of capital that doesn't necessarily get transferred through a will.

It is transferred through conversations at the dinner table.

Through the friends of one's parents.

Through the schools one attends.

Through the environments one grows up in.

Through familiarity with worlds that outsiders may not even know exist.

Call it social capital.

It can be extraordinarily powerful.

Professional Dynasties and Revolving Doors

We can see versions of this phenomenon everywhere.

Families of academics.

Families of lawyers.

Families of doctors.

Families involved in politics.

Families deeply embedded in government.

Business dynasties.

Families that seem, generation after generation, to produce people who somehow find their way into the same influential institutions and professional circles.

Of course, we shouldn't turn this observation into the simplistic claim that every child of a successful professional got their position through corruption or nepotism.

That would be both unfair and intellectually lazy.

Family advantages are real in much more ordinary ways.

Children inherit knowledge.

They inherit expectations.

They inherit cultural habits.

They grow up knowing which doors exist and how to approach them.

They learn the rules of the game long before someone else even discovers that the game is being played.

But that is precisely what makes the issue so interesting.

When family advantages become systematic, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate individual merit from the environment in which that merit was developed.

And suddenly, meritocracy becomes much more complicated than the motivational books suggest.

But That's Still Only the First Level

And here we reach the more uncomfortable part.

The family network is only the most visible layer.

Some people can rely on their parents.

Others inherit professional networks.

Others inherit wealth.

And then there are levels of access, influence, and connectivity that most people never encounter directly.

We don't need to imagine a secret room where a handful of powerful people sit around deciding everything.

Reality can be much more ordinary—and precisely because of that, much harder to see.

People who occupy the same circles tend to recognize one another, recommend one another, finance one another's ventures, exchange information, and create opportunities for one another.

Networks create more networks.

Capital creates more capital.

Prestige creates more prestige.

Connections create more connections.

And someone standing completely outside those networks can be extremely intelligent, disciplined, talented, and motivated—and still have access to a completely different set of opportunities.

The Perfect Hamster

This is where self-help becomes almost paradoxical.

It teaches individuals to become increasingly efficient competitors inside the existing system.

Work on yourself.

Become more productive.

Wake up earlier.

Work harder.

Improve your skills.

Build your personal brand.

Be resilient.

Stay positive.

Don't complain.

Don't blame others.

Keep moving.

And millions of people become incredibly good at running.

But hardly anyone stops to ask:

Where are we running?

More importantly:

Who built the track?

And perhaps the most important question of all:

Who started fifty yards ahead of us?

The danger is that personal development can become a gigantic training program in which individuals are taught to compete more effectively against one another without ever seriously examining the structure in which that competition takes place.

The hamster doesn't necessarily need to be happy.

It just needs to keep running.

The Missing Half

None of this means that self-help books are useless.

Discipline matters.

Communication skills matter.

Setting goals can be valuable.

Improving your abilities matters enormously.

Building confidence can genuinely transform a person's life.

The problem begins when these things are presented as sufficient conditions for success.

They aren't.

They are part of the equation.

The other part includes your starting conditions, wealth, education, family background, geography, relationships, institutions, opportunities, and the social networks to which you have access.

Perhaps we should start teaching that too.

Not only:

"Work on yourself."

But also:

"Build your network."

Not only:

"Raise your standards."

But also:

"Learn to recognize the structures in which you're playing."

Not only:

"Have the courage to take risks."

But also:

"Ask yourself who will catch you if you fall."

Because the greatest privilege may not simply be having more money.

It may be having the ability to fail without being destroyed by failure.

And no cold shower at five in the morning can give you that.

You can work to become the best version of yourself.

You can become more disciplined, more intelligent, more skilled, and more determined.

But intellectual honesty requires us to acknowledge something:

Personal development can make you a better player. It doesn't necessarily change the rules of the game.

And above all, not every player enters the field from the same starting point.

Maybe it's time to stop talking only about how to run faster.

And start talking about who owns the track, who controls the entrances, and who has someone waiting to pick them up when they fall.