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Except they can also find qualities like that in people they directly know, can't they?

They don't have to model themselves after billionaires.

This is a very cynical view to take. Much of your life is shaped by emulating people you have never known directly. And for the better.

Every time you read a book, you're engaging in a dialogue with someone you have likely never known personally. Be it the author, or the characters of fictional works.

Your heroes span time and space, find them everywhere, even among billionaires.

You're right, perhaps I've allowed myself to become a bit cynical. I just tend to think that, rather than "heroic" figures our society has awarded outsize rewards (i.e. stupendously humungous amounts of money and/or recognition) we'd be better off looking for "heroic" qualities in people already around us -- and who may be serving in roles far less glamorous: teachers, social workers, parents... or the guy in the next cube, even.

You know, in the spirit of the:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory

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