If instead they would be spending most of their time among African warlords, or Russian oligarchs, or whatever is their more civilized equivalent in USA, maybe they would have very different models of how wealth works.
If you look at the Forbes list there aren't many African warlords on it.
There are probably more people who got rich selling homeopathics, than who got rich founding startups.
Which people do you think became billionaire's mainly by selling homeopathics? Homeopathics is a competive market where there no protection from competitors that allows to charge high sums of money in the way startups like Google produce a Thielean monopoly.
If you look at the Forbes list there aren't many African warlords on it.
It seems possible that African warlords' wealth is greatly underestimated by comparing notional wealth in dollars. E.g., if you want to own a lot of land and houses, that's much cheaper (in dollars) in most of Africa than in most of the US. If you want a lot of people doing your bidding, that's much cheaper (in dollars) in most of Africa than in most of the US.
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