In recent years there’s been a strong outbreak of the Great Man Theory of History. This is the idea that single powerful or inspired men - literall

The Stone Soup Theory of Billionaires - by Brett Scott

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2024-11-17 16:30:02

In recent years there’s been a strong outbreak of the Great Man Theory of History. This is the idea that single powerful or inspired men - literally men - create history and should be adored, or, on the flip side, reviled. Trump is obviously one of these people, but so too is Musk, Bezos, Putin, and so on. Regardless of whether they’re imagined as superheroes or supervillains, it’s assumed that the future somehow springs fully-formed out of them.

When you imagine that the course of history uniquely resides in single individuals like this, you also imagine that slight shifts in their decisions affect everything for the rest of time. They’re like the star characters in a great global soap opera, but one in which nobody else has any role but to watch them, and either praise or condemn their actions.

This same style of thinking is often applied to their wealth. The Great Man Theory of Wealth assumes that extreme riches are the result of inspired work that the person undertakes. If Bezos had not got up one morning in 1994 and had an idea for Amazon.com, we’d never have a global e-commerce platform. I mean, there are only 8.2 billion of us on the planet. Surely, the chances of a second person working out that you could match buyers and sellers on the Internet is incredibly small!