According to my calculations at $40B BG accumulated roughly 1.5% of the increase in GDP from the time MS was incorporated 1981 thru 1997. This is one person out of 260M (some 3.8x10^-7 percent). Thus if you believe the current economic system fairly distributes rewards according to an increasing the economic pie then you must believe that BG contributed to the economy almost 4 Million times what the average American did. In other words economically speaking BG's life is worth the lives of 4 Million average Americans.
>What's the risk you take when you get someone else to write an
>article in your newsletter?
>
>> Cab drivers, asbestos cleanup workers, and strawberry pickers take
>> big risks too.
>
>But not with the intention of a big reward; taking risk is not the
>same as accepting risk.
>
Cab drivers, asbestos cleanup workers, and strawberry pickers risk their lives with only the reward being an expected remuneration that guarantees an uncertain day to day existence. Are they accepting risk - you bet your bottom dollar/life.
Now what risk did BG take. Upper income family, Harvard drop out, you can always go back to Mom, Pop and Grandma. Yeah, you may have egg(pie) on your face and suffer from emotional trauma but only if you fail. And in that case you can pay a good shrink to help you through that. Virtually no probability of being shot or getting cancer due to your job. Thus on a personal level BG's risk is about as close to zero as anyone can get. I'd bet billions of people throughout the world would like to have that level of risk.
What does intention of a big reward have to do with risk? What you are saying is that there is a prior coupling of reward to risk. Are you assuming that the bigger the reward the bigger the risk? Why? The causality seems twisted/reversed. It would seem to me that risk should be independent of expected reward. The only time anyone would take a risk is when the expected return (reward) is greater than the measured risk and its measurement uncertainty.
Risk in business is for the most part decreased as heavily as possible through knowledge of how the world operates, planning with that knowledge, and if you are big enough or powerful enough through socialization (IMF bailouts are a prime example of this.). Businesses are risk adverse. Businesses reduce risk through market research, focus groups, etc., and hire people with certain knowledge and previous experience that will lower the risk. Risk can be lowered to such a degree that the actual statistical risk is close to zero or a ³sure thing². When this happens the business operates in a risk free environment. As such any reward is not for risk at all! (Personally, I do not believe in the risk theory (myth) of remuneration, I have yet to see any empirical data that substantiates this. To date for me its a common Red Herring.) For those economists out there - if there is a valid theory of risk/remuneration I'd like to hear about it.