I get asked the same question everywhere. Keio University. Hong Kong conference rooms. Zoom calls at midnight.
"James, in the AI era, will it be easier for ordinary people to succeed?"
I usually dread it. I smile. I say something diplomatic about new opportunities. I change the subject.
But the hype has reached a fever pitch, and I have heard this exact narrative before. The mobile internet was supposed to democratize everything. Blockchain was supposed to level the playing field. The metaverse was supposed to make geography irrelevant.
So today, I am taking the gloves off.
Here is the direct answer: No.
The Successful Ordinary Person Is an Economic Oxymoron
Let me be blunt. The phrase "ordinary person succeeding" is logically flawed. It is the linguistic equivalent of a square circle, intersecting parallel lines, or scalding hot ice.
If we define success as financial outperformance—and that is the definition most people mean when they ask—we have to look at basic economics. Excess returns come from one thing: scarcity.
Lionel Messi's footwork is scarce. Nvidia's chips are scarce. TSMC's manufacturing capabilities are scarce.
What does ordinary mean? It means average. Easily replaceable. Abundant. In my dictionary, ordinary and not scarce are the same word with different packaging.
So when someone asks how an ordinary person can achieve extraordinary success, they are asking physics to bend for them. I once advised someone on building a deep competitive moat in the new search era, and the response was: "But I am just an ordinary person. I cannot do that. If I could do that, I would not be ordinary."
Do you see the trap? The premise itself prevents the outcome.
The Illusion of the Lowered Barrier
Over the last two years, a dangerously comforting narrative has taken hold.
"AI is here! The barriers have collapsed! CGI used to cost millions—now anyone can make a movie. Anyone can write a book. Anyone can code an app. The era of the commoner has arrived!"
It sounds beautiful. It is also economically naive.
Yes, the barrier to entry has crashed. But if you expect to make Hollywood money simply because you can prompt a video generator, you are ignoring how markets actually work.
It is not because other ordinary people do not know how to use Midjourney or ChatGPT. They do. Millions of them. And when millions of people flood the market with identical AI-generated commodities, the price crashes. It is a tale as old as time.
A bumper crop does not make the farmer rich. The oversupply drops the price of rice from fifteen dollars a sack to five. When supply is effectively infinite, value drops to zero.
The lowered barrier does not make ordinary people successful. It makes ordinary output worthless.
Who Actually Wins?
Will some people emerge from nowhere and build massive wealth using these tools? Absolutely.
But look closely at who they are. They are the people with a bizarre, mutant-level sense of market trends. Extraordinary imaginations. Radical storytelling instincts. Razor-sharp business acumen that lets them see around corners.
Previously, these brilliant individuals were buried in the crowd because they could not afford a film crew, a development team, or a marketing agency. AI removed the capital constraint. Now they can finally unleash their un-ordinary talents on the world.
It looks like an ordinary person succeeded. It was not. It was an extraordinary genius who was temporarily disguised as ordinary because they lacked resources.
AI does not create success. It reveals it.
What This Means for Your Business
In the corporate arena, this translates directly to how you structure your company.
If every business has access to the same LLMs, AI is no longer your competitive advantage. It is the new baseline. The table stakes. The electricity in the socket.
If you want to win, your business must become un-ordinary. You must compete on the things AI cannot easily replicate: deeply integrated operations, strategic vision, and human trust.
At Mercury Technology Solution, we do not sell isolated AI tools. We architect comprehensive ecosystems to Accelerate Digitality.
We deploy the Mercury Business Operation Suite (ERP) to streamline your sales, purchasing, and project management so your human talent can focus on high-level strategy rather than administrative noise.
We use Mercury Muses AI not as a magic wand, but as an intelligent agent that automates repetitive tasks and maximizes your team's operational productivity.
And because the internet is now flooded with AI-generated noise, we build your brand's digital authority through Search Everywhere Optimization (SEVO). We implement strategies to showcase Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—E-E-A-T—consistently across every touchpoint. We build a verifiable Trust Layer because trust is the ultimate scarcity in a world where content is infinite.
The Only Way Out
If I must answer the question—how can an ordinary person or an average business succeed today?—my answer is painfully unsexy, incredibly old-fashioned, and entirely devoid of hype.
You must become un-ordinary.
The direction is up to you. If you are not good at coding, become exceptional at empathy and sales. If you are not a great writer, become a master of operational efficiency and logistics. As long as you are willing to research, accumulate knowledge, and dive deeper than the person next to you, you will find your scarcity.
But if you are sitting around waiting for the AI fairy godmother to drop a pie on your head just because you learned how to type a prompt, you are going to starve.
People rarely want to believe the simple truth—that success requires agonizing, differentiating work. Instead, they desperately want to believe in a simple method. Why? Because the simple truth is hard to execute, while a simple hack looks so easy.
Take the red pill. Stop trying to be an ordinary person with a clever tool. Choose to be extraordinary.
What specific, un-ordinary human skill is your organization relying on to differentiate itself from competitors who are using the exact same AI?
Stay ahead of the curve.
— James
Frequently Asked Questions
Will AI make it easier for ordinary people to succeed?No. AI lowers the barrier to producing content, code, and media, which commoditizes those outputs. When millions of people can generate the same quality of work instantly, the economic value of that work drops toward zero. Success still requires scarcity, which means being un-ordinary in some dimension.
What is the "successful ordinary person" paradox?It is an economic oxymoron. Financial success comes from scarcity, while ordinariness means abundance and replaceability. Asking how an ordinary person can achieve extraordinary success is like asking for a square circle—it violates the underlying logic of how markets reward value.
Why do lowered barriers not create more winners?Because economics is not about access; it is about relative advantage. When everyone gains access to the same powerful tools, the tools become baseline. The advantage shifts back to who can use them in extraordinary ways—through vision, taste, operational excellence, or human connection.
Who actually benefits from AI democratization?Extraordinary individuals who were previously bottlenecked by capital constraints. Visionaries, storytellers, and strategists who could not afford film crews, dev teams, or agencies now have the tools to execute. AI reveals their talent; it does not create it.
How should businesses compete when everyone uses the same AI?By shifting from competing on commoditized outputs to competing on strategic vision, operational integration, and human trust. AI becomes the baseline. The differentiators become how well you execute, how deeply you understand your customer, and how much trust you have built.
What is the Trust Layer in digital strategy?The verifiable public reputation and authority that proves your brand's expertise is recognized by the wider digital ecosystem. In an AI-generated world where content is infinite, trust becomes the scarcest and most valuable commodity.
What does "becoming un-ordinary" mean in practice?It means developing a skill, perspective, or capability that is genuinely scarce. That could be deep operational mastery, extraordinary empathy, cross-domain creativity, or strategic foresight. It requires deliberate, agonizing work rather than relying on AI tools to do the heavy lifting.
Why is trust the ultimate scarcity in the AI era?Because AI can generate infinite content, code, and media, but it cannot generate genuine human trust, verified expertise, or authentic relationships. Brands that build verifiable authority and E-E-A-T signals become the scarce resource that both customers and AI models gravitate toward.
