Access Changes Everything.

It’s not a lack of talent or hard work.

I didn’t notice it right away; it took backpacking between borders and across continents to see the pattern. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The Pattern of Extraction

In Nepal, I trekked solo but spent some of the nights among guides and porters who knew the mountains better than anyone on earth. They carried the weight, managed the risk, and made the entire industry possible. Yet, the structure around them ensured they rarely set the terms. While foreign agencies controlled the pricing, the actual workers received only a fraction of the value they created. It’s an open secret; everyone knows it’s unbalanced, yet the silence remains.

In Bolivia, I met weavers producing textiles of incredible precision; work that demands months of skill. Most of these pieces stayed local, sold for prices that didn’t match the labor involved. The few pieces that "made it out" were bought by middlemen and shipped to luxury boutiques in tourist cities, sold for ten times what the weaver was paid.

In Morocco and across Central America, the story repeated. High-quality crafts were sold in small markets where pricing depended entirely on the luck of who happened to walk by that day. Without a bridge to a broader market, the ceiling for success remained permanently low.

Equality vs. Equity

In Cambodia, I saw this manifest in the next generation. I met students and teachers working with fierce ambition but limited resources. It made me think of the classic illustration of equity: three kids trying to see over a fence.

Equality gives everyone the same box to stand on. But equity gives the shortest child the most boxes so they can actually see the game. Just because someone was dealt a hand in a different country shouldn't mean they are denied the same view. We need to start approaching global problems with this mindset. Focusing on elevating those with the least to a standard of opportunity.

Position Over Product

At first, I thought the problem was resources or infrastructure. But the more I saw, the more it came down to something simpler: Access.

• Access to the customer.

• Access to market data.

• Access to the tools, networks, and information that dictate how something is priced and presented.

When you change the access, you change the economics. If a guide can connect directly with a client, their life changes. If a weaver can reach a global market, the value of their work triples. The product hasn’t changed. The effort hasn’t changed. Only the position has changed.

A New Foundation

Opportunity isn’t missing; it’s just unevenly distributed. Most of the time, the difference between staying where you are and moving forward isn’t a matter of talent or grit. It’s access

Understanding this raises a vital question for how we build businesses and global systems: What would change if we shifted our focus from extracting value from people to building systems that give them access?