Chapter 1: How the Magic Happens

The first thing that businessmen will tell you is that, to be poor, you have to be rich. And the funny thing is, they don’t even realize they are telling you that.

When you are in elementary school, you learn - whether from your teacher or a mandatory “inspirational” assembly or some other source of happy, sugary nonsense - that such and such millionaire or so and so billionaire were never born into their millions. No, they began their business in their garage!

Steve Jobs! Bill Gates! Walt Disney! All in garages!

And you can build your own business too! You just need a garage!

What was it about garages, you may have wondered? Well, not necessarily, as you might’ve tapped out due to mind-numbing boredom long before that. But if you had managed to hang onto those words, you might have wondered what it was about garages.

Well, what do garages do? Why, hold cars of course! And cars can be expensive. Sure, almost everyone has cars nowadays, and those who don’t are generally poor and have to take the bus instead. No car means no garage. So those businessmen are telling you that those poor people who cannot afford a car cannot build their business in their garage.

Okay, what about people who can afford a car but cannot afford a house? It’s hard to own your own garage when you’re renting a tiny apartment that has no garage to own. So those people who can afford a car but cannot afford a house cannot build their business in their garage.

Alright then, what about people who can afford a car and can afford a house? Well, they’re in a better situation, but even still not all houses have garages. And building a garage can be very expensive and time consuming, especially when you have bills to pay. So those businessmen are telling you that those people who can afford a car and a house may still not be able to build their business in their garage.

Fine, what about people who can afford a car and a house and a garage? At first glance, they are in the clear. But first impressions, as astutely noted by scholars from Austen to Snickett, are far from accurate.

One would need sufficient leisure time to create a business. Working a 9 to 5 at McDonalds is stressful enough to turn even the most hardened individual into a quivering wreck of a human, and leaves little productive time in the day for tasks that don’t involve pacifying children in the skin of adults.

So you realize, for an adult to start a business in their garage, they would need a job which pays well and has flexible hours. And for that, one would have to have not just an advanced degree in a popular field of study, but, more likely than not, someone inoffensive in the industry willing to help one find good opportunities. And for that to happen, in order to be accepted by someone inoffensive, one would have to be accepted by most members of one’s community. So, if you are a racial minority? If you are queer? A woman? Disabled? Some combination thereof? You probably will make some too uncomfortable to support you.

In fact, you realize, a person who falls into any of those categories may not even own the house and car and garage!

If you’re white, your grandfather who can lob a racist joke like the season’s opening pitch probably got the G.I. Bill for serving ice cream to the Marines who stormed Iwo Jima. That G.I. Bill would beget a home and a stable education for him, and he would be able to give his children (your parents) a comfortable life, which they would pass on to you.

If you’re Black, your grandfather who actually served on the front lines got exactly two things: jack and shit. That jack and shit would beget more jack and shit.

For a child, one would need to spring from the loins of the aforementioned, well-off and almost certainly white adult, and would need a supportive, well-off adult who could give them extra leisure time. To make things easier, in relative terms, said adult need not be a parent, but could be a friend of a parent. That being said, however, the same difficulties, in regards to identity, will apply.

So, in conclusion, those businessmen are telling you that only those who are white, cisgender, male, and are rich enough to own a car, a house, and a garage are poor enough to have to start their businesses in a garage.

Well, you shrug, perhaps the rags in the term “rags-to-riches story” referred to the hand cloths your butlers used to wash your car(s).

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