Why the ultra rich get rich, explained in two charts | Brian Klaas

**💸 The Genius Myth: Why Billionaires Aren’t Always Brilliant**

We’ve been sold a lie — that extreme wealth is the mark of genius. But when you peel back the layers, you find that **luck, not talent**, is often the true engine behind billionaire success.

While talent follows a normal curve — nobody is *a billion times more talented* than anyone else — **wealth doesn’t follow the same rules**. It’s wildly uneven, with a few sitting on astronomical fortunes and many scraping by. This disconnect points to something else at play: **luck striking in the middle of the talent curve**, not at the extremes.

A striking study simulating a world with randomly distributed talent and random events found that the **richest individuals weren’t the most talented** — just marginally above average people who got lucky again and again. Real-world outcomes echo this.

**Enter Elon Musk.** Sure, he has some talent — but he's also a prime example of someone who mistook wealth for genius. His Twitter/X debacle revealed that success in one domain doesn’t guarantee competence elsewhere. The myth of his infallible intellect unraveled when **his “genius” failed to translate across industries**.

But there’s another trait common to billionaires: **greed**. Unlike most people who might be content with enough, many billionaires obsessively chase more. It’s not just brilliance or even luck — it’s an insatiable hunger that propels them to hoard wealth, not distribute it.

So the next time someone equates riches with brilliance, remember: **lightning didn’t strike them because they were the tallest tree — it struck where there were just more trees.**

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