Life is not fair

Life is not fair. It never has been, and it never will be. Some people are born with powerful advantages. Others are born with crippling disadvantages. For everyone, in different ways and at different times for each person, life is challenging. And although life is not fair, it is dynamic and responsive. Though life is not fair, and though life presents you with endless challenges, you have the opportunity to do something about those challenges. One very important thing you can do is to dream, and use the power of those dreams to triumph even in the face of all the unfairness and the challenges.

It can be easy to assume that other people are the source of life’s unfairness. It seems obvious that things such as racism, greed, sexism, lust for power and other human shortcomings are what cause life’s unfairness, and that if we could just get rid of all that unfair, abusive behavior, life would be rich and fulfilling for everyone. Certainly greed and racism and all the rest do exist and can cause great harm to many people. Yet those things are not the source of life’s unfairness. Even if we were to end them completely we would not end the unfairness in life.

If you believe that all of life’s unfairness and troubles are caused by other people, consider this. Think about how it would be if you were dropped off in the most remote part of the Amazon jungle, hundreds of miles from the nearest person, completely out of the influence of other people. Would you still face challenges? Would life still be unfair? Consider how it would be if you were there completely naked and unequipped, with no clothes, no shoes, no map or compass or GPS device or satellite phone, no food, no water, no matches or lighter, and without even a container that you could fill with water. In other words, you would be completely free from all the unfairness imposed upon life by imperfect, self-serving people. What would you do? How long would you last? Do you think you would continue to encounter any unfairness? What if you came across a hungry jaguar, or an angry boar? What if a tiny insect bit you and infected you with malaria?

In such a scenario you would be completely free from the self-serving, unfair influences of other people. But here’s the problem. You would also have to do without all the resources and benefits provided by those very same, self-serving influences. It is generally warm in the jungle so you might be okay without any clothes, though certainly not particularly comfortable. But it sure would be helpful to have a good pair of hiking boots. Have you ever thought about where hiking boots come from? They are manufactured by companies that are in business to make a profit. Hiking boots don’t just fall from the sky. You can’t just dig them up out of the ground. In order for you to have a good, comfortable pair of hiking boots, someone must make them. The people who make hiking boots don’t do it just to be nice. They manufacture those boots as a way to make a profit, and ultimately as a way to support their own dreams. Yes, it may indeed be unfair that some people make a profit by producing hiking boots, and yes, it is certainly self-serving on the part of boot manufacturers to make that profit from their activities. But without that unfairness and without that profit, there would be no hiking boots.

But what if people could be convinced to make shoes and then give them away for free? Wouldn’t that be better than having to pay for them? Wouldn’t that take all the greed and unfairness out of the process? Or perhaps shoes could be sold at cost, with no profit, with the price set at just the right amount to pay the workers.

The problem is, no one would have the incentive to start such a business. No one would have the incentive to invest in such a business. No one would have any incentive to manage or grow such an enterprise.

There is a very well known business that does in fact give away millions and millions of pairs of shoes, Tom’s Shoes. On a visit to Argentina in 2006, Blake Mycoskie encountered many children who had no shoes. He was inspired to start a company that would donate a pair of shoes to a child in need every time someone purchased a pair of shoes. The next year, he was back in Argentina with 10,000 pairs of shoes to donate to children. Within a few years, the company had given away more than a million pairs of shoes. For the children who receive them, the shoes are a life-changing event. It was all because one man had one dream.

It is wonderful that Tom’s Shoes is able to give so many shoes to so many children in need. How are they able to do that? Because they make a profit. Profit keeps the company in business. The pursuit of profit motivates the people who run the company to continue coming up with stylish new designs. Profit enables the employees to earn a living. And profit pays to produce all those shoes that are given away for free. If the company stopped making a profit, they would eventually go out of business and there would be no more free shoes for children.

Life is not fair. It’s not fair that Bill Gates has made billions of dollars by developing software for computers, or that Steve Jobs has made billions of dollars with Apple Computer, or that Sergey Brin and Larry Page have made billions of dollars by starting Google, while so many people can’t even afford a place to live. It’s not fair, and yet it’s a whole lot better than the alternative. In the interest of fairness, would you be willing to give up your computer or the software that runs it? Would you be willing to do without the Internet or search engines like Google? The fact is, unfairness creates great progress that benefits us all.

Life is unfair, but so what? There’s nothing that can be done to eliminate the unfairness, yet there’s plenty that can be done to thrive and prosper in spite of it, and even because of it.

This post is excerpted from Ralph Marston’s new book, The Power of Ten Billion Dreams.