Is financial acumen just another form of generalized intelligence? Some argue yes—the ability to generate wealth functions like any specialized skill, whether you're mastering baseball or building businesses. The mechanics differ, but the underlying principle remains: practice, pattern recognition, and execution.

Yet here's where it gets interesting. When a society elevates money to the ultimate measure of worth—and ours does—something shifts in perception. Wealth accumulation becomes conflated with wisdom. The successful investor gets treated like a philosopher, the entrepreneur like an oracle. The algorithm is simple: stack enough capital, and suddenly your opinions on everything from politics to technology carry undeserved weight.

It's a fascinating gap between what money actually signals (specific skill in wealth generation) and what we collectively decide it means (broad intellectual superiority). One is earned competence. The other is mythology we've collectively agreed to believe.