'It is rigged': The brutal global philosophy Kiwi workers need to survive the economic fog

Sunday, 5 July 2026

Rising costs and financial stagnation have driven New Zealanders toward defeatism and a sense that the economic system is rigged.

Author Ryan Holiday argues resilience means rejecting get-rich-quick schemes like crypto and focusing on controllable, long-term habits.

True financial security comes from disciplined planning, like emergency funds and career choices, rather than passive resignation.

Analysis: Like thick fog covering Wellington’s airport on a winter morning, there’s a dark mood currently hanging over New Zealand.

We hear it at dinner tables, where conversations inevitably turn to the relentless cost of living and family members reminisce about when homeownership and a comfortable retirement felt achievable. We see it in statistics showing that fewer than half of us now think hard work actually pays off. And we feel it every time another young person departs for Australia or some other destination.

There’s a word for the way we’re feeling at the moment: ‘ennui’ describes a feeling of listlessness, weariness and dissatisfaction.

We’ve all been waiting for that feeling to burn away, but these gloomy clouds seem more stubborn than the ones we’ve seen before.

It’s almost as though too many of us have come to believe the system is rigged and there’s no point in trying any longer.

Here’s the thing. Those sentiments are valid. A series of financial and economic shocks since Covid – from soaring inflation to stagnant wages – have left many of us wondering if the financial system still works, or if the game of wealth-building is permanently rigged against the average Kiwi.

Austin-based writer Ryan Holiday doesn’t mince his words when asked if the system is rigged.

“It is rigged,” he shoots back quickly.

“It’s rigged in New Zealand. It’s rigged in America. It’s always been rigged. It’s been rigged because there are forces of corruption and oligarchy that have always existed.

“Life is fundamentally not fair. Good people find out they have cancer, good people get caught up in things, and bad people get breaks. I would love for karma to be real, but it’s only real in an internal sense.

“You can do horrible things and get ahead, and you might feel horrible inside, but the universe isn’t meting out justice. I wish it would, but it doesn’t.”

These aren’t reasons to despair, Holiday tells me.

“You can spend a lot of time despairing about how unfair and frustrating and difficult things are, or you can get to work,” he says.

“And I mean that in the sense of doing whatever it is that brings you joy, purpose or meaning. That’s something you can control.”

This idea of focusing on what you can control and paying less attention to what you can’t is central to the thinking Holiday shares via the Daily Stoic, his popular philosophy brand aimed at teaching people resilience. His thinking offers a guide on living a resilient life, while also providing a psychological playbook for managing your finances, investments, and career in an increasingly volatile world.

The defeatist attitude

Quiet resignation is a growing concern across New Zealand. You need only look at local elections to know that people love to complain, but rarely exercise their rights to effect change. But this reticence also plays out on a personal level.

Faced with high interest rates and a tough job market, many of us are quietly capitulating, adopting a mentality of financial defeatism. It’s always easier to complain about a stagnant salary or a lack of opportunities than it is to take proactive, strategic steps to manage your career capital.

And yes, these steps may not always yield the desired results, but neither will doing nothing.

Holiday notes that people often mistake stoicism for emotionless resignation.

“Not asking your boss for a promotion because it's outside of your control – that's not what stoicism is,” Holiday says.

Instead, it means fighting for the raise you’ve earned, but refusing to let the outcome dictate your self-worth.

“If my boss says no, or my boss yells at me… I'm going to go get another job where that isn't the case. I'm not going to sweat and whine and worry about it.”

Being resilient doesn’t mean simply accepting a mediocre status quo and not caring about anything.

It actually requires a concerted effort to make improvements where you can, allowing you to build the foundations upon which real resilience can stand.

Recent research by Victoria Mulligan, the co-founder of Design Futures Aotearoa, showed that resilience isn’t a plan in the absence of appropriate planning.

The timing of the next crisis may be beyond our control, but we can make proactive decisions about where to keep our money, how large our emergency fund should be, which insurance to prioritise, how much liquidity we need, and what information we trust.

All those things are within our control and can help us to better manage our financial fortunes – even when it feels like the world is against us.

Misdirected anger

At the same time, we’re also seeing the emergence of a cohort (often young men) wanting to make improvements but looking in the wrong places.

Holiday warns there are influencers online deliberately stepping into this vacuum and providing information that can sometimes be deeply damaging.

“A 19-year-old kid is not typically looking for a philosopher these days for life advice, because philosophy has gone into the ivory tower with academics and abstract questions and doesn’t offer practical advice,” he says.

What we have instead is the algorithm, which will answer any question you might have.

“But it’s not going to give the best answer,” warns Holiday.

“It’s going to give you the most engaging answer.”

And it’s in this world that we see distorted representations of wealth taking the form of Bugatti sports cars, mansions and high-risk investments like cryptocurrency and day-trading.

“Just like you have cowardice, you also have recklessness, and courage is there in the middle,” says Holiday.

“Most of our virtues, as Aristotle would say, are in a midpoint between two extremes.”

Treating the stock or crypto market like a casino and leaving your financial future to the winds of the algorithm isn’t brave, resilient, or stoic. True financial Stoicism isn't about chasing overnight wealth to escape the system. It’s about the disciplined, unglamorous compounding of small habits over time.

It means we can only wait so long for the fog to lift before we decide to get up and do what we can, no matter how dark things might still feel.

Ryan Holiday will speak in New Zealand at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland on 13 October. Tickets are still available via Ticketmaster.

So has the country become too negative? What do you think it could take to turn this around? Let us know in the comments section below.