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Ryan's Greater Equation of Privilege:
Your level of privilege can be decided by:
The size of your home divided by the age of your home x the number of rooms you don't use x how clean you demand the unused rooms be.
Your level of privilege can be decided by:
The size of your home divided by the age of your home x the number of rooms you don't use x how clean you demand the unused rooms be.
The square footage of your home is divided by how old the home is. So older homes start with a lower base privilege value. Therefore, people who bought a large old home and fixed it up would, for instance, have a lower base value than someone who built a McMansion.
Yet, if you bought an older mansion, the decrease in base value wouldn't be nearly as significant. This accounts for the fact that an older, larger home may be significantly less expensive if it's a fixer upper. I may have to work a "condition" factor into the main equation.
So if your house is 1,600 square feet (the average size of an American single-family home), and is 5 years old, your base privilege value is 320. If it's 2,000 square feet but 80 years old, your base privilege value is only 25.
Okay, next step.
Okay, next step.
Multiply that base value by the number of rooms in your house. This is equated on a 1=1 basis, so that each room by itself only counts as a single unit of the equation. For example: if your house is 1,600 sf, 5 years old and has four rooms, your value is now 1,280.
If you USE all those rooms on a regular basis, you multiply that value times zero, and stop there. So you end up with a privilege value of 1,280.
But when if you have eight rooms and only regularly use three of those rooms?
But when if you have eight rooms and only regularly use three of those rooms?
Each room not regularly used by you has a base value of 100. So the larger your house is, the newer it is, and the more unused space that's in it, the higher your privilege value.
Then we get into exactly how organized you demand the unused space be.
Then we get into exactly how organized you demand the unused space be.
There's a scale to that:
1. Not organized at all
2. Decently organized, enough so you can navigate it.
3. Enough so that it looks good but not perfect.
4. It needs to look perfect even though no one ever uses it or really even sees it but you.
1. Not organized at all
2. Decently organized, enough so you can navigate it.
3. Enough so that it looks good but not perfect.
4. It needs to look perfect even though no one ever uses it or really even sees it but you.
The first tier is an added value of zero. For each tier after that, you add a value of 1000, up to a value of 3000. You do this for each unused room.
Now, we need to establish what "unused" means.
Now, we need to establish what "unused" means.
"Unused" means no one regularly uses that room for the intended purpose. So if you have a sun room that no one ever sits in, that's an unused room. If you have a dining room that only gets used once a year, that's an unused room. A guest room but never any guests? Unused room.
I've gotta work on this part, but: if you have dedicated storage space, that's not a factor of the same amount, but it is a factor, because if you're well off enough to be able to store unused shit in a space built for that, you're better off than the vast majority.
So for now, here's a sample equation: a home that is 2,000 sf, 5 years old, with eight rooms, of which five are unused but must be kept perfect looking at all times, gets you a net privilege value of 48,000,000. Did I do that math right there? This isn't my native skill set.
But if the home were 2,000 sf, 80 years old, and you used all eight of those rooms for something on a regular basis, your privilege value would only be 200, because the factor about how clean the rooms must be kept would not be a factor.
Of course, the point here is not actually to quibble about specific numbers, factors, values and such. It's to get people to realize that hard work, dedication and intelligence do not have the same economic value in every place, time or situation.
If you live in a tiny village somewhere, you can go into town and sell fruit to tourists 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you'll never be as well off as someone who works 8 hour days in an office with weekends and vacation in a prosperous Idaho suburb.
Whether you end up passing down a two-story-and-a-basement house with 10 rooms to your kids, or a three-room shack that's constantly in danger of being repossessed depends less on how hard you work than where you're born and the opportunities you're afforded.
And yes, a rare few people can start with absolutely nothing and work their way up to incredible wealth and success, but the very nature of a market economy means only an extreme minority can do that.
This thread isn't to shame you or tell you you don't deserve what you have.
This thread isn't to shame you or tell you you don't deserve what you have.
It's just to, hopefully, make you think about how lucky you are if the particular place and situation you are from and the time in which you were born allow your particular skill set to enable you to be successful, and how easy it would have been for those things to not be so.
The End
