Not really, only if we assume the market is rational.
I think the fact that Elon Musk it the most successful entrepreneur in the world is a testament to the contrary. And that being a successful businessperson has nothing to do with merit or skill, but a lot more to do with happenstance, and former wealth.
Our public policy on the global market has been neo-liberalism on full steam, the rich are getting richer, not because business people are getting smarter, but because government is deregulating exploitation as a matter of public policy. Somebody is bound to become extremely rich in this environment, and it just so happens that the people getting extremely rich are either the ones that exploit workers (i.e. Jeff Bezos) or the ones that fool rich investors (i.e. Elon Musk).
Counterpoint: most people who are incredibly smart or incredibly hard working or even both, are not incredibly rich.
Musk is clearly an intelligent person in so far as your average person is not really interested in rocket science, or capable of running a business, but I hesitate to attribute his becoming the richest man on earth to his incredible intelligence. I think it should be evident that success in capitalism relies on a huge combination of factors.
I do think so. I think wealth disparity has enabled intellectual folks to, very quickly, propel themselves into the upper class, by essentially being part of the money machine that keeps rich people rich (hedge funds, ads, etc.). I don’t have any data to support this but I believe this was literally impossible before some decades ago. Certainly was not available to Einstein.
More evidence: people literally write songs about wanting/making money and this is acceptable in our culture. We live in a disgusting age.
Yes but no at the same time. It is much more likely to become wealthy if you are brilliant than not (assuming the starting point is the same) and that is precisely why acquiring skills increases your odds of success, and while on an individual level luck plays a big role on aggregate we can see that trends emerge very clearly.
It absolutely has. People like mark zuckerberg and the google founders became wildly wealthy from raw intellect and business cunning. Over long time spans, these types of people will collect in the upper crust of society. Everyone just wants to believe the game is rigged, on a long enough time frame genetic winners are at the top
I think what're you're saying is built on top of many faulty, and frankly, pretty classist assumptions.
You want "smart" people to have more wealth and income than "less smart" people, making an argument for a intellectual based meritocracy or something - I think ignoring all the other factors that determine success in a our economy like luck, family wealth, and business smarts. There are plenty of smart people that aren't rewarded for their skills by markets (researchers anyone?) and plenty of "less smart" people who are successful simply because of the prior success of their family.
Meritocracy may be ideal, but having it as the foundations of your economy thinking seems pretty ignorant.
And then I think a silly correlation between higher wealth & income, and spending habits are made. More successful people don't invest their money to improve their future financial prospects. There are plenty of rich people who piss away all of their fortune or still manage to live paycheck to paycheck, and there are plenty of lower income people who vigorously penny pitch for a retirement account they won't see until they are 70.
Furthermore, frivolous items of consumption like alcohol, gambling, and fast food is present across all classes. Wanting to have a good time doesn't depend on your income. Higher rates of consumption may be seen in lower classes, but I would chalk that up to lack of opportunities and lack of information than inherent stupidity or something.
An entrepreneur who lucked into a company that made him billions is not necessarily more qualified than anyone else to allocate society's resources. I'd also argue that a politician that managed to win a popularity contest is also not necessarily qualified to allocate society's resources. But at least the latter is, in theory at least, accountable to that society.
There are probably lots of smart people out there qualified to allocate society's resources, but they tend to not become billionaires or win elections.
Not even close!
I don't think you'd want to hear it, but whereever a huge amount of money is, you will find some of the world's smartest people.
People and businesses don't make such astronomical amounts of money just on sheer dumb luck. They do it by being very smart, knowing the system and analyzing it for maximum profit. Of course, human nature being what it is, wealth can cloud the vision of even the smartest people, leading to the situation we have now.
But don't think for a second that Wall St. is populated only by "lower tier" thinking.
Capitalism has lots of opportunities for smart people to create wealth. It's hard to just be a "worker" or "researcher", but if you are smart and determined you should be able to create a business that makes the whole world richer.
I do agree though there is a lot of wasted talent and effort.
At the crux of this issue is the question about correlation of intelligence and ambition with wealth. I would be surprised if there was no correlation at all, on the other hand it would be interesting to see what the relationship really is but I can't think of an experiment that could be done in a way which would be both accurate and ethical (for example switching poor and rich children at birth).
This seems to be one of the arguments around keeping taxes low for the rich (or "job creators") the implicit assumption seems to be "rich people are smart, therefor they should be put in charge of money distribution".
As an example, there was somebody I grew up with who is now running a ~$1 million turnover web design company at 27.
He is sometimes invited to speak at events as a successful entrepreneur and demonstrated as an example of how hard work can pay off etc.
Unfortunately if you know the real story it is somewhat less impressive. He graduated from university with a fairly average degree and was having trouble finding employment at any job that he was interested in working at. He comes from a wealthy background however, so had little time constraints on his job search. After some time he decided to give up looking for work and establish himself as a freelance designer, his family gave him a chunk of money with which to establish himself.
For the first few years his business was not too successful and was draining capital, he was having difficulty finding clients as his portfolio of work was not really comparable to other established companies who were charging similar rates.
After a few years his family sold one of the businesses they owned which freed up a bunch of extra capital, a chunk of this they gave to him. He was able to use this money to hire some talented designers who did excellent work and won him a bunch of awards and bigger contracts, this was really the catalyst that made him successful.
Of course if the guy was a complete idiot he would have squandered even that opportunity, he was intelligent enough to run a business day-to-day but there was no way he would have managed that without such a capital injection. Would be interesting to think about how many people in his position would have failed and how many would have been successful earlier.
I disagree. Having wealth lets you spread risk. That’s one of the big reasons that success breeds success. At least when success is measured in dollars, not projects.
This is why so many wealthy people are VCs.
The failure of the fire phone, Blue Origin (TBD), Virgin Galactic etc simply reinforce the notion that successful people aren’t necessarily smarter than anyone else. But if they only make $10 billion from every billion they invest in crazy schemes… well they are still some way ahead of most of us.
And in lots of cases you don't need to be smart to build a successful business - time and place often matter the most.
Speaking here of my own experience.
So yeah, often idiots can be super rich and its absolutely ok.
Also you can be a genius going something without resources and connections, so there are millions of reasons why you can be way smarter than the rich guy on top while you are not rich at all.
Wealth does not imply intelligence. Some people are at the right place at the right time. People who win the lottery aren't usually geniuses.
I'm not saying intelligence didn't help Zuckerberg, I just disagree that wealth=intelligence. There are plenty of poor geniuses out there, like Grigori Perelman who solved the topological conundrum.
You are probably right... I think all the opportunities to pull a Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates or Sergey Brin/Larry Page in our current economy require education, (some) resources, and free time to tinker, which is really hard when you are living hand to mouth.
The ability to social climb probably requires several generations at this point. First getting into the middle class, then the upper middle class, then finally into the owner class. I still say it's possible, but yeah, it'd require a brilliant mind and a lot of luck to do it all in one leap.
I think the fact that Elon Musk it the most successful entrepreneur in the world is a testament to the contrary. And that being a successful businessperson has nothing to do with merit or skill, but a lot more to do with happenstance, and former wealth.
Our public policy on the global market has been neo-liberalism on full steam, the rich are getting richer, not because business people are getting smarter, but because government is deregulating exploitation as a matter of public policy. Somebody is bound to become extremely rich in this environment, and it just so happens that the people getting extremely rich are either the ones that exploit workers (i.e. Jeff Bezos) or the ones that fool rich investors (i.e. Elon Musk).
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