I don’t mean to suggest people literally consider them special in thought (though there are folks that do believe wealthy folks are divine).
But an objective view, minus culture bias, of economic activity would show a lot of activity swirling into Bezos’s bank accounts
What are Bezos ideas? Selling books online. Today that seems rather quaint, so yeah it was a different thing in 199-whenever
But that’s it. Everything else has been curated around him — cloud and such, he didn’t invent shared compute time.
But the system inherently protects that now. Ownership is the root of power. And the public, through government, has taken on debt to prop up ownership of new ideas and achievements as described in the anecdote about nuclear subs
IBM refused to invest in transistor computers. So the government did. And gifted it to IBM for mass production.
There’s a paper trail to tell a narrative that shows Bezos, etc, got lucky to live now, after all this government invention
And now he just says work on cloud and homes for me with 25 toilets and that’s how it goes. He’s that special in the system that he can command such
But he’s not elected. He’s not divine. And the species has plenty of demands that aren’t related to what he needs.
I’m picking on Bezos, but to me the notion applies to any super rich “my great grandkids can retire on inheritance.”
Those are the conversations we should be having.
I’ve tutored kids in comm college, algebra and basic coding, who can absolutely build web apps and shit, but all their lives assume adulthood is pragmatic acquiescence their future
Not working with the neighbors they grew up knowing, but for elites a world away
Pragmatic acquiescence has us literally discussing the value of Bezos and the stock market and not opioid addiction, and mental health — where there is plenty of demand
My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist specializing in early intervention. She gets paid bupkis by the children's hospital but working super interesting cases. She gets paid reasonably by the county for providing homecare to some kids who really need help as the county is the Medicaid payor of last resort and the kids really need help. She gets paid handsomely by private parties, but the work is often dull.
I'm not sure people work at the corps because the pay is better. I suspect many are attracted by some of the crazy problems on offer.