“Just become an owner” assumes the barrier is courage.

It isn’t. It’s capital.

Risk looks very different when you’re risking surplus wealth versus when you’re risking your rent, healthcare, visa, and your entire savings in one concentrated bet.

Calling that a simple matter of “choice” is fiction.

Saying most engineers could just become owners if they wanted to is like saying most renters could just buy apartment blocks.

Technically possible. Structurally delusional.

Ownership compounds. Salaries don’t. Equity scales exponentially. Labour income scales linearly. The system is designed that way.

You can defend it as efficient. You can defend it as rational. But pretending everyone is standing at the same starting line deciding between “comfort” and “ambition” is cosplay.

The dividing line isn’t grit. It’s who can afford to fail.