If you want to be loved in America, get rich and make it seem that you got rich doing exactly what you wanted to do and being exactly who you wanted to be. Invent a machine – or better, a series of machines – useful, affordable and attractive enough to be received as a fetish object by your customers. Happy customers will yield happy shareholders, jobs (in retail, if not manufacturing) and economic growth, and your life will be held up as proof that business can be spiritual. This is something America would very much like to believe.

LRB 15 December 2011 | PDF Download