faramir77 posted...
There aren't many billionaires, if any, that didn't achieve that status without both being intelligent and cheating others.
If intelligence was a prerequisite to being ultra-wealthy, we would expect to see the ranks of billionaires dominated by scientists, researchers, and other fields that attract the intelligent. But that's not what we see at all - instead, we get some guys who are smart (Bill Gates seems to fit the mould), some who are of average intelligence, and some who are objectively dumb as fenceposts (like Trump - Musk also seems to be in that vein, though I'm currently undecided if he's legitimately stupid or just has terrible impulse control and an inability to consider the viewpoints of others).
Intelligence is not strongly correlated with extreme wealth; sociopathy and generational wealth remain the best predictors of who's going to be a billionaire.
Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!