F. Scott Fitzgerald was right when he declared the rich different from you and me. But today’s super-rich are also different from yesterday’s: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity—and the countrymen they are leaving ever further behind.
11:01 PM
V: This article talks a lot more about finance high-rollers than industrialists. In fact, I would suspect a lot of these stereotypes are applicable only to finance high-rollers.
I am skeptical how much the world of finance really means in the short or long term.
... for all this article talks about idea festivals and idea makers and thought leaders and whatever. Well, what was the last idea that you heard come out of one of those? That wasn't just, hey, I have an idea, why don't I go network with a bunch of people so I can hob-nob and make money?
I think Taleb makes the point that people who are successful almost always attribute their success to some remarkable quality of their own personalities - some individual exceptionalism - even when such success could just as adequately be explained by pure chance.
I guess there is just a continuation of the same excesses of past plutocracies. This sense of personal exceptionalism, singular purpose - the pretenses of culture and nobility.
