Now I'm sure there's many better-read Batman fans out there who could tell me about some storyline or miniseries in which Wayne Industries and its corporate life are actually central to the plot and not merely ornamentation to the Batman's heroic aspirations.

I will risk overgeneralization, and state that in Batman media meant for the widest possible consumption—e.g. hit TV series and films and video games—there's not usually meant to be much attention given to exactly how Bruce Wayne and his business empire make their money. We're generally supposed to assume that he's that outrageously unrealistic creation of U.S. popular entertainment, the Good Capitalist™. We are invited to accept the premise that Bruce Wayne is the ideal boss who pays well and treats his workers with compassion and mostly stays out of their way, because his real job is Batmanning.

That's a comic book businessman. That's also exactly how Sam Altman and Elon Musk and Jensen Huang and all the other corporate executives are routinely written about. For centuries now, U.S. media and journalism have been idolizing the Man of Business.

Ayn Rand didn't invent John Galt—she was not an inventive writer, not in the slightest—but instead grabbed for an archetype that already existed, that was already being created and puffed out en masse. Citizen Kane exists as a commentary on this self-aggrandizing culture of business titans who strive to present themselves as the great innovators and architects of society.

You'd think journalists would notice, at some point, that it's all smoke and mirrors.

Oh I need to be fair here: of course there are honest journalists who notice these things and attempt to write about them, but they are not allowed to make too much noise—not compared to the boosters and the "optimists", for it seems to be considered unseemly to suggest that maybe a #business or #investment opportunity SHOULD fail. In my opinion it should never be the job of journalists to protect business speculators, who after all are making big promises and demanding an unhealthy amount of social latitude (not to mention gazillions of dollars) in exchange for a chance to make those promises come true.

It is still gambling, when it comes down to it. The entrepreneur is promising, without certainty, a return on investment. Anyone willing to throw in, is gambling. Is it actually a good idea to entrust the creation and direction of businesses (and entire industries) to gamblers?

And now you can gamble on gambling, with a "prediction market". Swell.

Where am I going with this? Oh, nowhere very impressive. I am merely pointing out something that seems like it ought to be far more obvious than it actually is: all the people who get into the headlines of stories about #business and #technology, all the executives and big-name investors and founders, are gamblers—and gambling is not actually a productive activity. Others must produce, in order for gambling to happen. Quantities of money increase rapidly thanks to gambling, but nothing is being produced thereby; there's no "creation of wealth", if by #wealth you mean something substantial and solid.

A large number of stockholders are willing to gamble that a share in Elon Musk's shitshow is still gonna be worth a LOT of money in the future, and for that reason U.S. society and journalism says that Elon Musk is among the world's richest persons, and his fans say even more hyperbolic things about him. The general tenor of the U.S. press about Musk is that he—Musk personally, Musk himself—has created something astounding and unprecedented, and the proof is that a lot of people gamble a lot of money on him still.