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IMHO, it has nothing to do with importance or impact of the work one does. It has to do with the supply and demand: Even if we assume the irrational that e.g. a cleaner's work is 100x more important than Zuckerberg's work, the fact that for every Zuckerberg we can find much more than 100 cleaners means that a Zuckerberg is much more important than a cleaner, not that cleaning is more important or less important that Zuckerberg's work. In fact, personally, the impact from absence of cleaning would be much bigger than the impact from absence of Facebook. But if I take the importance of cleaning and multiply it by the scarcity of cleaners I get a smaller product than multiplying the importance of Facebooks with the scarcity of Zuckerbergs.


I don't think there is a true scarcity of Zuckerberg's as every day I walk down the street and am amazed at the overwhelming mass of self important d-bags walking around....

All trolling and snark aside your comment is the antithesis of the point that many factors outside of the individual contribute to their success. If you believe that then the number of those individuals capable of similar success rises dramatically. Also those who clean and do "ordinary" jobs are people who are similarly shaped by many factors they don't control.

Also I am very certain that people would get by better without Facebook then they would with the lowly legions of those toiling away to keep the world merely "clean".


> Also I am very certain that people would get by better without Facebook then they would with the lowly legions of those toiling away to keep the world merely "clean".

I totally agree with that. That's why I weight it with the scarcity. Of course you disagree with the scarcity of Zuckerberg, but in my comment I assume that what defines a "Zuckerberg" includes the outside factors that the individual doesnt control.




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