Dalio's huge success and wealth is a perfect example of mediocrity being rewarded. Bill Gross is another. I don't understand how there are so many talented, smart people online and who write blogs yet this guy is a billionaire many times over. It's not like he is the smartest by a long shot. It's not like Tesla or Space-X, in which only Elon is uniquely qualified to run those companies. If you took all the 1000 smartest people on reddit and here and put them in charge of major companies and investments, GDP would triple in a decade lol . That is sort of what Renaissance tech did with investing by screening for the smartest people in the world (and Renaissance was founded by a genius as well), which is the most successful hedge fund ever by huge margin.