I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous you end up with a 24-hour job.
You look at the steamboat the railroad the car the airplane - not all of these were invented in the Anglo-American world but they were popularized and extended by it. They were made possible by the financial architecture the capital intensive operations invented and developed by the Anglo-Americans.