>Of course a leader provides tens or hundreds of times the value of a follower, what an absurd question.

Why is this of course? If it weren't for the followers the leader would have nothing except hot air.

The real value is in the followers, it's just distributed over larger numbers. Maybe I'm missing something, but someone actually has to do the work and it's not normally the "leaders"...

There are a lot of small businesses getting a really hard education in this right now.

Because followers are interchangeable, but a leader is someone that wills something into being from nothing. It's incredibly demanding, most people can't even start a hot dog stand from scratch.

Why is it an absurd question? You haven't justified this "tens or hundreds" figure at all, just called it absurd.

When the form of wealth is stock, the functional difference between having 1 or XX billion is corporate control of the company.

If your point is that it's important for founders to keep control, then sure, but you can have different classes of shares. Founders can stay in control of their companies without making tens of billions.

In the US, I guess this is true, although non-voting/low voting shares are illegal in many parts of the world.