Researchers have asked authors of multi-author papers, what percentage of the work they personally did. When they added up the response from each respondent, the total, on average, was 140%.
This phenomenon is known as egocentric bias. Most people think they do most of the work.
They tend to overestimate their influence on the outcome of work they've been involved in and they tend to underestimate the influence of external factors on the ultimate outcome.
This bias also leads us to underestimate the influence of other external factors on our lives such as luck or privilege.
Our history of deifying materialistically successful people goes way back. It is very prevalent in our country since there are countless rags to riches stories on which we can fall back and make the argument that our success or failure is entirely of our own doing.
However, this is nothing but survivorship bias. We only tend to consider the stories of the successful people but not of the ones who were equally talented, equally hardworking but who still failed.
For every rags to riches billionaire, there are countless others who just didn't make it.
Almost always, this kind of success is obtained through inheritance, privilege, exploitation of labour, through public funding, or through a combination of these factors.
I once knew a web developer who got paid TK 15,000 to build a website his employer earned TK 9 lakh from, although it is the developer who did all of the work.
Labour creates value and this is just one of countless examples of exploitation of labour.
Most of the rich RMG factory owners we know are knee-deep in debt. The money they owe belongs to the ordinary people for the most part.
While the average citizen lacks access to even the most basic of necessities, public funding helps these rich people get richer.
On top of this, some of their success is built on the backs of child labour.
It is no wonder that most American billionaires are white men. Although as a percentage of the total population of America, they are a minority, as a percentage of the billionaire population, they are not. That is simply because they have the most privilege.
This doesn't mean that women are less hardworking or less intelligent than men. It doesn't mean that people of colour are less hardworking and less intelligent than white people. It just means that privilege plays the biggest role in one's success.
Once the rich make it over to the other side, they tell us romantic stories of how they made it there through sheer determination, grit, intellect, and hard work.
Due to the massive influence they have on every aspect of our lives, they can easily shape our psyche and lead even the most struggling of people from the working class to believe that they too can someday be ultra-rich through sheer determination and hard work.
This kind of hyper-individualistic mentality leads to the erosion of class consciousness in our society.
Being privileged is OK, but denying your privileges is not.
Denying privilege and denying luck make us less charitable.
It not only leads us to justify our place in society, but it also causes us to accept class stratification and social inequality. It hinders progress towards an equitable society.
Let us all be more class conscious.
Shams Ishtiaque Rahman is a freelance contributor.