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Comment by jathu | Hacker News Reader

This is reminiscent of auteur theory in film, which essentially says that the director is the author of the film. Similar to corporations, making a movie requires a lot of people with different skills/talent. The director overshadows everyone and is the person primarily credited with authoring a film, they even overshadow the writers of the screenplay. One of the leading arguments for auteur theory is that the director has the vision of the film and they set out to create it. This is the same narrative used in the startup world: the founders have the vision. So this extends to why we credit founders for the invention of products, just like how we credit directors for films.

Maybe 100 years from now we will say "Steve Jobs invented the iPhone/smartphone", just like how we say "Thomas Edison invented the light bulb" or "Martin Scorsese made Taxi Driver".

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It's older than that, how many innovations are credited to Emperors, and victories in battle to Generals? I think it must be the product of some parts of human nature.

Yes, I think people naturally need well-defined figures to look up to, to praise, and to try to emulate. It's a lot more powerful to say "George Washington" won the US Revolutionary War than to talk about all his subordinates, even when those subordinates made many independent wartime decisions that were essential to winning the war. And yet I can't even name one of those people offhand.

Alexander Hamilton is the next easiest to mind, due directly to the musical. One of Hamilton's complaints in real life and emphasized in the musical was that he wanted as much, if not more, to be as brave/glorious as the generals and soldiers of the War, but was "stuck" in such an inglorious position of being Washington's aide-de-camp and helping Washington run the war.

ETA: The explicit irony being that most of Hamilton's work during the war is of course attributed to Gen. Washington, and in the current zeitgeist the only reason people remember his involvement today being the popularity of a musical of a biography of his.

"Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors ?

Every 10 years a great man. Who paid the bill ?

So many reports.

So many questions."

https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/literature/brecht/

It is of course an illusion created because all the talent around a director is taken for granted. Put Steve Jobs or Elon Musk is Somalia and come back in 10 years and see what they had accomplished. Probably not very much at all. Elon Musk himself realized early that he could not achieve his dreams in South Africa and left.

The danger of focusing too much on the leading person, is one easily forgets that if one doesn't create a society full of talented engineers, scientists, teachers, with good infrastructure etc, then these people will not be able to do their magic.

It is easy to think that without Eddison there would have been no lightbulb, but really when you look at it, it becomes clear that if he had not lived somebody else would have done it. But they wouldn't have done it any random place. With high chance it would have been the US as well due to the presence of the right sort of mix of talent, drive, money and opportunity.

If you fail to create this environment then "great" leaders are useless.

Napoleon was a brilliant military strategist, but if he not lived France probably would have gotten another brilliant military strategist taking over Europe? Why because the French revolution created a system that allowed talent to flourish. Talented generals moved up the ranks fast rather than those with the proper names and family.

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