The billionaire myth takes a beating
Long before Donald Trump rode down the golden escalator or Elon Musk purchased Twitter (now X) or Sam Bankman-Fried built a crypto empire, Americans lionized billionaires.
“The idea of a self-made American billionaire is the super-sized version of all other self-made myths, and outlandish to the point of being at least mildly insulting,” BSchools.org, a blog about business schools, explained. “Individual achievement still deserves recognition. But these things don’t operate in a vacuum — and massive wealth is never solely attributable to the actions of a single person.”
But, as we have learned again and again this year, sometimes the self-appointed “genius” billionaire is simply a crank, a con man or a beneficiary of familial wealth and luck.
Never has the billionaire myth looked shakier. Trump, the four-times-indicted former president, is facing civil liability for exaggerating his wealth (built on inheritance) and property values. Bankman-Fried is facing a lengthy prison sentence for fraud. And Musk, who lost more than half of Twitter’s value, self-incinerated in a now-viral interview in which he crassly told off advertisers.
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