Oh, and possibly a reinforcement of the proffessor thing... one of my professors gave up the job of being a CEO of a multimillion dollar company HE  founded. 

Just so he could teach.

Teaching doesn't need to be valued with money, because of how appealing a job it is to those who do it.  If very capable people are willing to do it for the amount of money they are being paid... what's the motivator to raise their pay?

Exactly. So there is no reason entertainers should get anywhere near the amount of money teachers, researchers get, much less such an astronomical amount over them.

I would also gladly live without Avatar since it didn't bring anything. If you think To Kill a Mockingbird has the same effect as Avatar then you were clearly not listening in your literature class. Here is a hit, think of the topic and the time it was released. Avatar on the other hand is worthless.

Oh, and possibly a reinforcement of the proffessor thing... one of my professors gave up the job of being a CEO of a multimillion dollar company HE  founded. 

Just so he could teach.

Teaching doesn't need to be valued with money, because of how appealing a job it is to those who do it.  If very capable people are willing to do it for the amount of money they are being paid... what's the motivator to raise their pay?

Listen, people like a movie, they want to see it, they pay money to see it. That's how these people make money. Because they create products that millions of people want. That's called capitalism. If people don't like it for some reason that these individuals make so much money, then they can just not buy their products anymore. Simple as that. They do want their product though ,so they should stop moaning.

And I didn't study English literature (I don't live in an English speaking country) and I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird (yet). I have seen the movie though, and it's lightyears better than Avatar, but the ideea is that they're both products part of the same category, a category of products that people can live without (though I personally think that would be terrible).

Which is why I had "I can make a very strong point about the fallacies of capitalism" in my initial post to begin with. My problem is that people are idiots and give their money to something like entertainment, and their idiocy comes from the fact that they don't realize they benefit more from education. "Oh no, do some educatoin cuts and reduce my taxes, I wanna have the money to golf!" Complete and utter morons.

Yes, which is why states should interfere, and make sure people are getting educated. Democracies don't work if people aren't educated and not capable of critical thinking.

Reality is that people aren't educated and capable of critical thinking, which is why Democracy is a great idea that just doesn't work in reality. The reason it works is because it distances us the most from idiots in power.

Though to be fair the absolutely best government is a dictatorship with a good leader. Problem is that leaders are fucking idiots in reality, so that doesn't work either.

I'm confused. Does it work or not?

It's not a 0 or 1 answer. It works solely because we haven't found anything better, yet. But realistically no, it doesn't work as well for society as it should.

I actually know a whole lot of professors who opened businesses to make more money, they still research but they are making too now. Granted this is the CS field so there are plenty of things that can be done in the field.

I am also curious about how much money he made from his CEO. Probably the best teacher I ever had was in history, and he used to be a very successful criminal lawyer. His reason for teaching? "I love teaching, and considering I have enough money to live my enitre life there is no reason to do it." I never asked him this, but I doubt he would have picked up teaching over the law given how much monetary stress comes with teaching. It's very easy to say "yeah i'mdoing this because I like it" once you have the money, much harder when you don't.