I don’t know what to make of the claim that everyone who writes “books,” or “reporters,” or any group of great interest, generally acts as if CEOs, the “world’s upper echelons,” and the “power elite” are a bunch of mental defectives. It doesn’t seem remotely plausible to me.
Is this really a critique of academic intellectual culture? Academics probably do routinely underestimate the intelligence & competence of businesspeople. I don’t have the sense that most of the rest of the civilized world does.
Eliezer, thanks for sharpening the point for me. Still, I’m used to your posts catalyzing so much insight that this one continues to strike me as remarkably banal, even naive. I’m probably missing something. Do all that many educated people really think that CEOs of mid-to-upper-level corporations and hedge-fund managers are not generally more intelligent than average?
Equally importantly, the question that this point raises but doesn’t address at all: do you think that intelligence dominates driving force behind ascension through corporate hierarchies? My instinct is to think that you’ve got to be smart to succeed, but you’ve also got to have a certain kind of power-loving personality, and be charismatic, and have at least a few other qualities.
To put it another way, when you say, “There’s another world out there, richer in more than money,” that’s obviously true; but isn’t it just as obvious that plenty of people with that kind of riches aren’t in business, government, or the power-focused professions?