Way to confirm our worst preconceptions about you, Barsanti.

Steve Jobs is the one who recruited John Sculley to replace Mike Markkula as CEO in the first place (Jobs himself had never been CEO), which he wouldn’t have done if Sculley were actually an idiot. Jobs resigned after he tried to remove Sculley (after the board instructed Sculley to stop Jobs from wasting so much…

Reread my comment. I started by discussing charities, then on to investments. Theranos took investments. Cassandra is not a mere “investor” in Alpha, she’s founder & CEO.

Musk is FAR richer than his parents. Why is it so hard for YOU to get that?

most of that being womb environment and not genetics

If Cassandra lost control of her company to an idiot (Miles), it is hard to believe she was smart.

No, even aside from inherited wealth and pure luck (which is also essential to reach the highest levels of wealth) I believe in the existence of such traits as “moxie” which are disconnected from merit to the extent of even being at odds with it much of the time. But an idiot who attempted to oust a non-idiot from a…

Him convincing the “Disruptors/Shitheads” works for all but Lionel, since they don’t seem all that smart. But if Cassandra lost control to Miles, she would have to be even dumber than him.

They have not been idiots.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is indeed not great, but it’s also not good either. It’s not decent, ok, fair, alright, or any ranking above “bad”.

If the second season of House of the Dragon actually required more work from him, it would be delayed like Winds of Winter. Instead, like the Poul Anderson tribute anthology he was supposed to contribute to* it can continue via the efforts of others in order to make the deadline.

Yes, in real life idiots do not manage to do that. At most someone might inherit stock in a corporation, but that’s not the case in the film, rather he squeezed out someone we are supposed to believe is smart.

Sofia Coppola is questionable as an example since she hadn’t intended to be an actress but was simply available for her dad when others dropped out, plus she actually did follow in her dad’s footsteps as a director.

That’s true... but Elon’s dad doesn’t have that first “billion” and Elon has a lot more than 2 billion. People born poor are unlikely to become rich (after all, most people aren’t rich), but people born rich are unlikely to become as rich as Elon Musk.

more than a few children of celebrities made (or signed on for) their big-screen debuts

Elon’s net worth appears to be more than 50000 times his father’s.

He’s very rich (although the estimate I read puts him at $700 million rather than a billion), notoriously difficult (ask the crew of The Abyss, or his numerous ex-wives), and he DOES try to “disrupt” cinema via technological advances.

I think there’s a big distinction between a person who had a massive amount of success and then decided to spend a lot of money on something only of interest to them (James Cameron does deep sea exploration), and a fraud.

I would say he’s also very quick-thinking (even if the quality of that thinking leaves much to be desired).

Holmes & Fried qualify as frauds (although I don’t think Fried’s wealth could have just been chalked up to fraud). But Zuckerberg is a different case. He’s not in any immediate danger of losing everything, and Facebook is still a massively popular site however much we might wish otherwise.