Also most founders do not get a multi-hundred X income multiplier. Instead they fail and often go into debt. Yes there are some outsized winners, but the vast majority don’t. That’s why we should be elevating those individuals to promote a culture of risk-taking.
I don't think either is particularly worthy of "glorification". I'd reserve glory purely for people who help other people without much monetary reward.
Sure the latter is important, and we should talk about them too. But civilization progresses due to risk-takers like Ford who spot an opportunity and dogmatically pursue it.
Yeah that sounds about right to me. Ford got a ton of money, what's he need glory on top of that for?
I’d rather we had another newly minted billionaire employing 60k people with middle class jobs than one more man who helps old ladies cross the street for free.
A billionaire who employs 60k people hasn't done anything altruistic. It's a business, not a charity. The skills and time of those 60k people made the billionaire a billionaire. Why would I laud either side in a fair exchange?
I might praise the skill and foresight of the billionaire. I might praise the skill and hard work of the workers. But neither is "advancing society". They're pursuing their own interests.
The only people who don’t care about the economy are ones who haven’t lived through a truly bad one.
It’s not some thing that just happens in a vacuum to make people rich. It’s what drives 99% of the production of all goods and services in the US. The endowments for all of our top research universities depend on the economy, etc etc.
You call it “just a business transaction”, but employing 60k people with good paying jobs in a financially sustainable way is incredible because it means they are producing more than the value of all of those salaries to the wider society. Producing a surplus is how we advance.
You can argue that some businesses are leeches because externalities or whatever, but that can be fixed with taxation. When it comes down to it we need to operate at break even or a surplus as a society or we are fucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
So yeah, he shouldn't get glory, but instead only be looked at as an example of 'how to make a bunch of money'.
The accumulation of wealth only serves as an example of the accumulation of wealth; the opinions of those accumulating are quite often orthogonal to any other consideration.
How about that happens after they retire at 80? That would be a good balance. You glorify an entrepreneur and soon enough he'd be pushing BS vaporware products or using his cult of personality to raise endless equity at absurd valuation or outright scamming the government (Musk cough cough...conman cough cough)