Are his words any less valid because of that?
Still - this work harder thing is like the dieting tips in women's magazines. We've all heard it about 1000 times before, but somehow we still need to be reminded of it from time to time.
My preferred despair poster explain perfectly your statement.
Sure, Steve Jobs was instrumental in starting Apple, but the amount of work he did to get that first hundred million was tiny by comparison. A lot of salespeople hustle and work just as hard -- just in less effective directions. Lots of middle-aged maids from Guatemala work harder.
Not to mention the sheer luck of knowing Woz in the first place. Or the fact that Jobs did it because he was interested in computers at just the right time and place. A lot of people follow their interests but the industry isn't some gigantic wave.
Plus some things come naturally to people and it isn't "hard". Woz designed the Apple II mostly at night while he was working at HP. Hard for him would have been doing all the stuff Jobs did -- like talking to people! Some people not only socialize easily, it's hard for them NOT to socialize.
A lot of the successes just do what they WANT do, they don't "try hard" to make themselves do something. Bill Gates just loved running his own software company. He could have retired years and years ago, but he wasn't in it to make money in order to do something else. He'd rather run Microsoft than sit on a beach sipping umbrella drinks!
I would venture to guess that most well-known successes just did what came naturally. They didn't have to push themselves, in the way that when you're angry you don't have to push yourself to shout. You just feel a certain way and it's hard not to go along with it.
Probably most of the confusion and inertia here is because people know what they don't want to do (work some sucky job for 30 years), but not what they do want to do.
I think the question isn't "what would you do if you ALREADY HAD millions of dollars", but what would you do if you didn't have to worry about being broke. If all the basics were covered, but no luxuries (like having your own swell bachelor pad), and you were free to pursue whatever type of enterprise you wanted.
Ben Stein is the worse kind of troll. I hope the media ostracizes him and I expect they will. He has completely ruined his legacy with his appearance in Expelled. Though he can probably make good money doing speaking jobs to fundies.
Ben Stein may say some valuable things in the future and I don't completely dismiss everything he says as wrong -- I just do not care what the man has to say anymore.