I think we all take our 'reality' for granted. All it takes is to sit back and question 'reality' as it is to see that the majority of humans who run the show on this earth are insane. The average person wants, in usually the same order, education, money and prestige. I wonder if anyone realize that the only way to be successful in 'education' is if you know more than others and get paid for what you know and what you do with what you know. So, in order to be 'clever' you need every one else to be 'stupid'. To be 'intelligent' you need that the 'unintelligent' outnumber you, in order to achieve the other benefits that come with 'having a good education', i.e. money and prestige.
If 'knowledge' is not the chosen path towards prestige and money, another path, business, can be taken. I suppose that is why there is an undercurrent of animosity between the academic and the business person. The academics think the corporate-types are corrupt and greedy and care little for ethics and values. The money-makers think that the intelligentsia are wasting a resource by not profitting from the fact that they are the gatekeepers of knowledge, sitting on a throne of power. Knowledge is power is money is power is knowledge. I myself have found that education and business makes a very poor marriage.
To be successful in business requires that you have some kind of monopoly over the supply and pricing of the products and services you are selling. To be financially successful in business is to (a) convert the masses to consistently and incresingly desire your product / service so that you have economies of scale (b) inflate the price so as to burden to some extent, the majority.
If solid, well-run business sells at a price that makes a profit but not a very big one, the general costs of living will eat into the profits making the business sustainable at best. This is usually the case with state-run services and non-profits. Unless the appetite for 'a better standard of living' does not corrupt the pool of people available to take up jobs to maintain these structures, these structures will eventually fail to attract the better/best talents and collapse under its own ideals.
To be rich requires that other people are to be made poorer. If every single person in a society is highly productive and knowledgeable, they will charge each other for their goods and services in a way that makes everyone equal again in the end. You can only be rich if you charge /earn significantly higher than the going costs-of-living, which in turn means that for a group of people to be rich, a majority would have to be not-rich or poor. The only exception would be someone like Warren Buffet, who makes his money buying a resource when it is selling way lower than its capacity, and then to reap the benefits when market sentiments restores the company to its rightful value. Even the idea of making money from the already rich supports a system where the rich have to continue doing what makes them rich in order to afford the things sold to rich people.
Now, if one possesses neither the faculties for academia nor entrepreneurship, the third path is prestige. The entertainment business together with 20th century media has spun a dimension which proliferates the opportunities for 'prestige' to be a marker of success. In order to be famous and have the prestige that comes with it requires a mass that believes that prestige and fame is highly-rewarding and even desirable that they will pay a person for the prestige and fame that they do not possess. If every person is well-known for what he/she does in a society, the allure of prestige and fame and the benefits that comes with it would seem like a ridiculous concept.
All one has to do is to sit back to realize that the things we desire in order to be a 'success' really means denying others the same access to them. This sort of thinking encourages greed and selfishness in order to get ahead. This is a wrongful and destructive way of thinking. And the majority are driving in that direction.
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