My instinctive answer to this question is that in a world that didn't afford people the opportunity to amass great fortunes through commerce, ambitious status-seeking people who are very skilled at managing large organizations would become WARLORDS instead of billionaires.
Of course, there might be a third alternative, such as 1980s Japanese-style corporatist managerialism, where ambitious super-managers simply rule over corporate fiefdoms instead of amassing great fortunes.
The question of what to do with ambitious super-managers is not easy!
The question of what to do with ambitious super-managers is not easy!
And it's also worth mentioning another possibility: That in the online age, control of physical resources simply won't be as important a status symbol as before, and the ambitious super-managers will want to be online influencers instead of billionaires or warlords...
