Honestly, the problem is that this country has continually equated great wealth with great intelligence, and as such whenever someone deigns to criticize Musk, Bezos, Bill Gates or Larry Elison, etc., they are immediately shouted down.
Let me let all of you in on a little secret, as someone who deals with wealthy people on a daily basis …
Honestly, the problem is that this country has continually equated great wealth with great intelligence, and as such whenever someone deigns to criticize Musk, Bezos, Bill Gates or Larry Elison, etc., they are immediately shouted down.
Let me let all of you in on a little secret, as someone who deals with wealthy people on a daily basis in my job: RICH PEOPLE ARE NOT SMARTER THAN YOU!!
They are more willing to take risks, they are generally self-delusional, and very imaginative, but they are not smarter.
Remember that Elon Musk did not invent Tesla, he bought it, nor did Bill Gates invent the first Microsoft Operating System. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile; and John Rockefeller did not invent oil drilling, or refining.
So people need to stop cow-towing to these people; they use that as a way to beat down any criticism, regulation or oversight of their businesses.
I hate using this term, but at this point we as a society have now reached a tipping point: Someone needs to put these guys in their place, and only the government can do it!
I was watching Real Time and one of Bill Maher's guests was Adam Corolla. He fell for that fallacy repeatedly. He called Musk the "smartest man in the world."
I remember watching Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla on "The Man Show" on Comedy Central (a show that could never see the light of day today...) and judging by their career paths it seems pretty clear which one of them had the brains in that outfit.
Trivia note: After Carolla and Kimmel left the show and Joe Rogan became a cohost...
We sometimes need to look at how we misuse words in making false assumptions. For instance, both sides talk about the "elites" -- they mean different things, but in general they mean those with power over the rest of us and those with more money than the rest of us. Actually, neither are those things makes anyone "elite" in the proper sense of the word. It has come to mean, through collective misuse, "those are are superior to the rest of us" because of wealth or social standing or power or allegedly intelligence. Actually, an "elite" is someone who honestly is the best at something, the most skilled at something. And none of the very wealthy or powerful or political are elite in that sense, unless by the best you mean the most ruthless or the most corrupt or the most willing to do anything for power and wealth. Remember the bumper sticker "The moral majority is neither"? Well, the so-called elites are not either. The tipping point is leaning to the down side. Either we are a nation of law and order and laws and equality. Or not. So far, it's not.
I've seen many examples of the equation of rich = smart to which you refer. And in my younger days I had a somewhat similar view. As a working-class guy living in a blue-collar milieu, it seemed only natural to assume that anyone who could accumulate a large fortune had to be pretty darned smart, and a lot smarter than me. Took some 'living' to figure out that wasn't the real difference.
But I've known a lot of guys over time who held that view and never bothered to examine it in any significant way, if at all. Guess it didn't bother them to see themselves as less smart or intelligent than someone else based on the size of their bank account, a point of view I can certainly no longer understand, and haven't for a very long time now.
I'm no genius, but I'm smart enough to know that a lot of rich folks aren't either. If a few more folks like me would wake up to that fact, it might not be as hard to "put these guys in their place" as it might be otherwise, since they might just change their view about how our government kowtows to these people, and why.
Honestly, the problem is that this country has continually equated great wealth with great intelligence, and as such whenever someone deigns to criticize Musk, Bezos, Bill Gates or Larry Elison, etc., they are immediately shouted down.
Let me let all of you in on a little secret, as someone who deals with wealthy people on a daily basis in my job: RICH PEOPLE ARE NOT SMARTER THAN YOU!!
They are more willing to take risks, they are generally self-delusional, and very imaginative, but they are not smarter.
Remember that Elon Musk did not invent Tesla, he bought it, nor did Bill Gates invent the first Microsoft Operating System. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile; and John Rockefeller did not invent oil drilling, or refining.
So people need to stop cow-towing to these people; they use that as a way to beat down any criticism, regulation or oversight of their businesses.
I hate using this term, but at this point we as a society have now reached a tipping point: Someone needs to put these guys in their place, and only the government can do it!
I was watching Real Time and one of Bill Maher's guests was Adam Corolla. He fell for that fallacy repeatedly. He called Musk the "smartest man in the world."
Donald Trump is a poor man's idea of a rich man.
Elon Musk is a stupid man'd idea of a smart man.
I remember watching Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla on "The Man Show" on Comedy Central (a show that could never see the light of day today...) and judging by their career paths it seems pretty clear which one of them had the brains in that outfit.
Trivia note: After Carolla and Kimmel left the show and Joe Rogan became a cohost...
We sometimes need to look at how we misuse words in making false assumptions. For instance, both sides talk about the "elites" -- they mean different things, but in general they mean those with power over the rest of us and those with more money than the rest of us. Actually, neither are those things makes anyone "elite" in the proper sense of the word. It has come to mean, through collective misuse, "those are are superior to the rest of us" because of wealth or social standing or power or allegedly intelligence. Actually, an "elite" is someone who honestly is the best at something, the most skilled at something. And none of the very wealthy or powerful or political are elite in that sense, unless by the best you mean the most ruthless or the most corrupt or the most willing to do anything for power and wealth. Remember the bumper sticker "The moral majority is neither"? Well, the so-called elites are not either. The tipping point is leaning to the down side. Either we are a nation of law and order and laws and equality. Or not. So far, it's not.
I've seen many examples of the equation of rich = smart to which you refer. And in my younger days I had a somewhat similar view. As a working-class guy living in a blue-collar milieu, it seemed only natural to assume that anyone who could accumulate a large fortune had to be pretty darned smart, and a lot smarter than me. Took some 'living' to figure out that wasn't the real difference.
But I've known a lot of guys over time who held that view and never bothered to examine it in any significant way, if at all. Guess it didn't bother them to see themselves as less smart or intelligent than someone else based on the size of their bank account, a point of view I can certainly no longer understand, and haven't for a very long time now.
I'm no genius, but I'm smart enough to know that a lot of rich folks aren't either. If a few more folks like me would wake up to that fact, it might not be as hard to "put these guys in their place" as it might be otherwise, since they might just change their view about how our government kowtows to these people, and why.