> Man, those capitalists are dumb, aren't they? How'd the ever end up
> running the world?
You could turn it around and argue that because they run the world they don't _have_ to be smart. Feudal seigneurs ran the world for a long time, and nobody ever said they were more than middling smart. Quite a lot of them were dumber than dirt, in fact. Let us eschew social Darwinism.
But I don't think anybody in this conversation denied that capitalists, or more to our present purposes, corporate executives, were smart -- at least as smart as the average bear. The question was more what they're being smart _about_. They're smart enough about getting ahead in business, but that has a very loose connection, if any, with making a good product. You can see this every day. Gone into a Duane Reade lately?
I'm wondering, by the way -- where is it written in Chuckie's oeuvre that capitalism prevailed primitively, or continues to bestride the world today, because capitalists were or are exceptionally smart?