A Swedish study on 59,000 men entitled The Plateauing of Cognitive Ability among Top Earners by sociologists Marc Keuschnigg, Arnout van de Rijt and Thijs Bol has shown that the brainiest people and the biggest earners are two largely separate groups.
Indeed, the highest-earning 1 per cent and the brainiest 1 per cent seem to be two largely separate groups, with little overlap. Simon Kuper, who wrote about the study in his Financial Times column, asked “If that’s so, how should we treat each elite?”
Well for a start, billionaires prancing around Davos pretending to be “thought leaders” can be ignored.
Davos, a geographically constrained closed network of a select few, just had its annual meeting a month ago. Official attendance is by invitation only
Wrapped in the rhetoric of changing the world and solving inequality, what we have is a collection of the rich and famous eating caviar, quaffing champagne, uttering meaningless Churchillian pronouncements and making deals at Davos, officially known as WEF: World Economic Forum.
Very impressive!
Meanwhile creators and doers who were likely not at Davos have changed the world in ways never imagined. These are the unsung heroes.
Corporations who hold membership in WEF send a small number of key delegates to the meeting in Davos based on their membership tier.
If you get an invitation, it’s a big fucking deal; you go to town with it and blitz it on LinkedIn and all forms of social media and announce to the whole world. The message is “My dick is very much bigger than yours. In fact, mine is probably the biggest dick in the world!”
I wasn’t invited. I obviously have a very small dick.
That’s why I’m rushing out to buy a BMW.