Chapter 16: The Stolen Ladder — Why Effort No Longer Buys a Return
A Simple Question
Why could the previous generation buy a flat, raise a family, and put their children through school through hard work, while this generation cannot afford even a down payment no matter how hard they try?
This is not a question about "whether the effort is enough." It is a question about "whether the system you are in still allows effort to be exchanged for reward."
The previous chapter divided those who "pursue passion" into three kinds: those with a safety net, those with some means but no safety net, and those without even breathing room. The third kind exists not because they are not hardworking enough, not because they lack talent, but because the underlying rules of the entire system have been rewritten.
What this chapter sets out to dismantle is how those rules were rewritten. It comes in three layers.
Layer One: Credential Inflation — When Education Turns from Ladder to Treadmill
Take Hong Kong as an example.
In the 1980s and '90s, Hong Kong had only two universities. A university degree was a genuine ticket of admission — obtaining one would qualitatively alter your life trajectory. Society's tacit agreement was: study well and you will find your way out; a degree is the most reliable channel for upward mobility.
Then universities expanded from two to nine. Sub-degree programmes, associate degrees, and self-financed institutions proliferated. On the surface, this was progress in educational universalisation. But no one asked a question: did society simultaneously create a corresponding number of high-paying positions?
The answer is no.
The result was credential inflation. When everyone holds a degree, the degree is no longer a ticket of admission — it is merely the starting line. But the track behind the starting line has not widened — the same number of management positions, the same number of professional roles, the same number of upward channels must now be contested by ten times the number of graduates.
More cruelly still, society still needs people to do front-line work. Someone must deliver food, tend shops, clean buildings. But now the people doing these jobs hold university degrees. It is not that their abilities are insufficient; it is that the positions are insufficient.
Educational expansion promised a vision of "everyone can move upward," but the social structure did not expand alongside it. The result: education turned from a ladder pointing upward into a treadmill that runs forever but arrives nowhere. You must step on or be eliminated; but once you step on, you find yourself running in place.
This is not only Hong Kong's problem. Globally, the real purchasing power of a university degree — measured by the standard of living it can buy — has declined in nearly every advanced economy. The educational distortion dismantled in Chapter 7 reveals its other face here: that treadmill grinds away not only your time but also your hope.
Layer Two: The Collapse of the "More Work, More Reward" Model
Credential inflation is only the surface. The deeper problem is that the entire social contract of "hard work earns reward" is failing.
The Hong Kong of earlier times had a relatively linear reward model. A truck driver could work with their hands for ten or twenty years and pay off a mortgage and support a family. A small shopkeeper, diligently running a shop for decades, could accumulate enough capital for the next generation to get a start.
The premise of this model was: a broadly stable proportional relationship existed between effort and reward. How much you put in was roughly how much you got back. No guarantee of wealth, but a guarantee against futility.
That premise no longer exists.
The reason is a fundamental change in the structure of wealth flow. Under globalised economics and financial capitalism, wealth growth has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of asset holders, not labourers. A person who owns three properties, doing nothing, can earn returns through asset appreciation that easily surpass twenty years of savings by a full-time worker.
This means "more work, more reward" has been downgraded from a social fact to a consolation phrase. Hard work is still necessary — without it, you cannot even hold onto basic sustenance. But hard work is no longer sufficient — no matter how hard you push, the rate of return cannot keep pace with asset appreciation.
For young people, this "decoupling of effort and reward" is the true root of despair. Not because they do not want to work hard, but because they see too clearly: the rules of this game have changed, and those who changed them are not them.
Layer Three: The Systemic Compression of Survival Space
If it were only a decline in the rate of return, the situation might still be bearable. What is more lethal is that the very space for creating new possibilities is itself being compressed.
This compression operates in two directions. One offline, one online. Both narrow simultaneously, squeezing people in between.
First, the offline direction. Take Hong Kong as an example — but the same logic applies to London, Tokyo, San Francisco, any city where capital is highly concentrated. A young person wants to open a small shop. Hong Kong's commercial rents are among the world's highest; a few-hundred-square-foot shopfront can consume most of the revenue in monthly rent. Any thin-margin, high-volume business model is mathematically nearly impossible.
And new shops keep opening on the street, many operating under a business logic that is fundamentally not about "making money through business." Take the low-price chain brands that have flooded in recent years as an example — a drink sold for a few dollars cannot survive under Hong Kong rental costs in any normal business model. Yet they not only survive but expand. The reasonable inference: the essence of these businesses lies not in operating income but in capital transfer. Operating revenue is merely left hand paying right hand. For someone genuinely trying to run a business, you must compete not only against normal competitors but against "competitors" who do not care about profitability at all. They can operate at a loss because loss-making is their business model. You cannot.
What about online? Many would say: since physical rent is too high, just run an online store, do social media, become a content entrepreneur. Low barriers to entry, no rent, just a computer to start.
On the surface, this is a reasonable alternative. But you quickly discover that the online compression mechanism merely takes a different form.
The monopolistic force in physical retail is the property developer — they control space and squeeze profits through rent. The monopolistic force online is the platform — they control traffic and squeeze visibility through algorithms. You do not pay monthly rent, but you pay "traffic rent": ad placements, purchased exposure, compliance with platform rules, accommodation of algorithm preferences. Fail to pay this "rent," and your products and content sink to the ocean floor, unseen by anyone.
Moreover, the online competitive environment is more brutal than offline. Offline competitors are geographically limited — only so many bubble-tea shops can open on a single street. Online has no such limit. Your competitors are everyone globally willing to trade losses for traffic. When a factory with extremely low supply-chain costs can sell directly on a platform at near-cost pricing, you as an intermediary have no survival space whatsoever. When an influencer with millions of followers can trade influence for free product supply and then dump at low prices, you as a zero-follower newcomer simply cannot enter the market.
The "low-cost online startup" narrative carries the same class blind spot as the "pursue what you love" narrative — it assumes low entry barriers equal low survival barriers. But entering a market and surviving in it are two different things. The cost of opening an online shop approaches zero. The cost of making it visible, of keeping it alive past its first year — that is not low at all.
And online survival carries a risk that offline does not: the cost of making enemies. On the same street, you open a shop identical to your neighbour's — worst case, they occasionally check your prices. But online, selling the same products and competing for the same traffic — worst case: malicious reports, plagiarism accusations, fake negative reviews, platform complaints to get you delisted. These attacks require no justification, only motive — and competing for the same piece of pie is the most sufficient motive. Before you have even started working, you must spend energy fending off attacks.
Here, "the benevolent have no enemies" descends from Chapter 14's philosophical proposition to the ground. The practical meaning of "no enemies" is not defeating everyone; it is doing your utmost not to turn people into your enemies. In the context of online survival, this means something very specific: differentiate, do not join the rat race. If what you create is different from everyone else, you are not stealing anyone's pie. Not stealing anyone's pie does not mean no one will attack you — indiscriminate malice always exists, and some people feel threatened simply because you exist. But you at least avoid the largest source of attacks: the kind triggered by direct competition, driven by clear economic motive. Differentiation does not guarantee no enemies, but it lets you spend most of your energy creating, not defending.
The rat race is mutual slaughter within a fixed-size pie. Differentiation is making your own pie. The former inevitably creates enemies; the latter is not enemy-free, but enemies are far fewer. This is not a moral choice — in an environment where the ladder has been dismantled and the loop has been sealed, it is the only remaining survival strategy.
And the red ocean itself is undergoing a deeper degeneration: from competition to homogenisation, from homogenisation to hollowness. Open any e-commerce platform: product pages for similar items are nearly identical — same selling points, same layouts, same positive-review templates, even negative-review replies that look as if generated by the same AI. Open any content platform: videos on the same topic use the same background music, the same editing rhythm, the same "lead with the conclusion, backfill with the story" formula. It is not that creators lack ideas; it is that the algorithm rewards precisely this kind of thing — it pushes "formats already verified as effective," and so everyone imitates already-successful templates. The AI narrative economics dismantled in Chapter 4 is cashed in here in the most direct way: when production approaches free, what gets mass-produced first are things indistinguishable from one another.
The endpoint of homogenisation is not "everyone looks roughly the same" but "there is nothing inside." When everyone uses the same formula, the formula itself loses the capacity to carry meaning. The tautologies located by the word-image-meaning framework in Chapter 12 — sentences that sound correct but contain no real information — are not occasional occurrences in the red ocean; they are the mainstream output. Headlines are tautologies, copy is tautologies, product descriptions are tautologies. The surface is fierce competition; the substrate is a void.
So differentiation is not merely "a smart strategy." It is the only approach that can produce things with actual content — because the rat race within the red ocean has already ground "content" itself away. You differentiate not to avoid competition, but because the direction of competition has nothing left in it.
Survival space is not shrinking naturally. It is being compressed systemically. Offline, pressing down from above are the rents of property monopoly; pushing in from the sides are capital games that do not play by business logic. Online, pressing down from above is the platform's traffic tax; pushing in from the sides are global competitors willing to trade losses for scale. Both sides narrow simultaneously. But in the crack between them, differentiated things — things others cannot produce, do not want to produce, or have not thought of — still have a narrow path. Narrow, but it exists.
Three Layers Stacked: A Closed Loop
Stack the three layers and you see a self-reinforcing closed loop.
Educational expansion manufactured large numbers of highly credentialed people but did not create corresponding upward channels. These people are forced to accept jobs and wages mismatched to their credentials. Low wages mean they cannot accumulate assets. Inability to accumulate assets means they can never catch up with the speed of asset appreciation. Failing to catch up means they cannot enter the "assets generating assets" cycle. Those who have already entered this cycle see their assets continue to push up rents and property prices. Higher rents further raise the threshold for starting a business. Moving online, the platform's traffic tax and globalised price wars seal off another route. As the threshold rises, more people are forced back onto the track of wage work. Wages from work cannot keep pace with prices. Prices are determined by asset holders.
The loop closes.
The society of before was an open model — you could enter from the bottom, climb up through hard work; the ladder was not wide, but it existed. Today's society increasingly resembles a closed model — the ladder has been dismantled, the elevator opens only for those holding a specific pass, and obtaining the pass requires you to already be upstairs.
The ladder the previous generation climbed through hard work is not broken; it was taken away. Then someone stands on the rooftop and tells those at the bottom: you need to try harder.
So What Now
After seeing the structure clearly, the most immediate reaction is anger. But anger has no exit; it is merely confirmation — confirmation that you have seen the problem.
What can be done: stop blaming yourself — when systemic problems are repeatedly attributed to individuals not trying hard enough, that itself is the system's self-protection mechanism. Do not wait for the ladder to be returned — those who took it have no incentive to put it back. Record — when everyone is saying "try harder" and "stay positive," those who can say "the ladder was stolen" will grow fewer; recording itself is resistance. Do not let the system's logic invade your self-assessment — your worth does not equal your salary; your life does not equal your net asset value.
But all of the above, taken together, still only amounts to recognising the problem. Lucidity is important, but lucidity is not a way out. Seeing that the ladder was stolen does not mean you can get upstairs.
The Only Real Way Out: Create
Becoming the top 1% in any given field is, of course, viable. But that sentence itself contains its own limitation — by definition, only that 1% can do it. So what about the remaining 99%?
The answer is not to try harder to climb a ladder that no longer exists. The answer is to build a new one.
What is the essence of the rat race? A group of people slaughtering each other within a fixed-size pie. The pie does not grow, but more and more people fight for it, and each person's share shrinks. No matter how hard you try within this framework, you are merely competing with the other 99% for the same piece.
Only creation — making something that did not previously exist — can escape the rat race. You are not stealing someone else's pie; you are making your own. It may be small, unattractive, noticed at first by only a few people. But it is yours, and before you made it, it did not exist in this world.
This is, of course, extraordinarily difficult. Creation requires time, energy, and skills — all of which are precisely the things compressed away by the three layers above. A person working twelve hours a day — where does the time to create come from? A person who cannot pay the bills at month's end — where does the margin to absorb the risk of creative failure come from?
So "create" is not a breezy piece of advice. It is a narrow path — but it is the only path that still works after the ladder has been stolen.
And the Four Classics framework dismantled in Chapter 14 — understanding patterns, grasping principles, knowing how to implement, upholding values — is actually the foundational capability set prepared for creators. You need to read the environment's patterns (the I Ching) to know where cracks exist. You need to understand acting in accordance with the flow (the Tao) so you do not charge headlong into an unbreakable wall. You need to know how to begin in adversity (Mencius) so you can start with minimal resources. You need an unshakeable value anchor (the Confucian tradition) so you are not assimilated by the system during the process of creation.
The Accusation of a Flower
In July 2026, a Taiwanese film from 37 years prior was rereleased in cinemas across Taiwan — Lu Bing Hua (The Dull-Ice Flower).
Directed by Yang Li-Guo, scripted by Wu Nien-Jen, and adapted from Chung Chao-Cheng's first full-length novel, the film was selected for the "Cannes Classics" section that year — the only Taiwanese film selected for that edition. Returning to the big screen after 37 years, the response at its Cannes premiere proved one thing: this story has not only not become outdated; it has become more pertinent than ever.
The story is about a child named Gu A-Ming from a poor tea-farming family who possesses genuine painting talent. An art teacher from the city recognises his gift and wants to nurture him. But in a rural society dominated by power and class, the village chief's son naturally receives all resources and recognition. Gu A-Ming's talent is ignored, suppressed. In the end, the child dies of illness. His paintings later win an international competition — but he is already gone.
A genius withers. The system does not even blink.
And the symbolism of "lu bing hua" (the lupine flower) itself is even more cruel. This flower is commonly planted beside tea gardens; after blooming, it is ploughed into the soil to become fertiliser nourishing the tea plants. It gives silently, then disappears. The flower fades; the tea grows; no one remembers the flower.
This is the literary archetype of the stolen ladder.
Gu A-Ming's ladder never existed. It was not stolen; no one ever built one for him. The rich child stands inside the elevator; he cannot even find the stairwell. His passion is real — purer than any form of "pursuing what you love" discussed in the previous chapter — but no one pays his bill. He does not even have the right to possess a bill, because he is too poor even for the margin to calculate expenses.
And the teacher who recognised his talent is the person Chapter 14 described as "knowing it cannot be done, yet doing it still." He saw injustice; he tried to change it; he ultimately failed. The system did not budge an inch because of his effort. But his very existence is a record — proof that in that time and place, someone saw the truth, someone attempted resistance.
When Chung Chao-Cheng wrote this story in 1960, most Taiwanese writers were producing anti-communist literature. He chose to write about a poor child and a flower. That choice itself was creation — in an era when everyone was writing the same kind of thing, he made something different. More than 60 years later, the anti-communist literature has been largely forgotten, but Lu Bing Hua endures.
The flower withered, but it enriched the soil.
An accusation from 37 years ago. Read today, every word still applies. The only difference is: the scale of ladder theft is larger, the flowers ploughed into the soil are more numerous, and the people standing on the rooftop saying "you need to try harder" now have AI to say it for them.
The ladder has been stolen. The loop is sealed. In an environment like this, how do you intend to walk?