Impervious

 Among the more interesting sociological developments of recent years has been the Cult of the Tech-Bro. The nature of venture capitalism is that if you have a lot of money, you can make a lot of money. For some in Silicon Valley, that meant their creation of a "killer app" enriched them to the point where they could gain further riches just off the wealth they had already accrued. For others, it just helped that they inherited a South African emerald mine.

What is clearly not true is the idea that Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires are some sort of ubermensch. If they actually are tech engineers, they have that idiot savant characteristic of really knowing how to design software, but aren't really up on how to design human community. If they are just wealthy people making more money in a target-rich environment, they have the same borderline sociopathy that drives most of the super-rich.

The spectacular implosion of Elon Musk and the literal implosion of Titan should be enough to disabuse people that these folks are anything other than money magnets. They aren't imbued with brilliance or profound insights into the human condition.

Yet, you have an entire Musk-cult that extends in various permutations and forms of worship to other people like actual vampire Peter Thiel. 

Back in the Gilded Age, there was a minister named Russell Conwell who preached the Acres of Diamonds sermon. Here is the most famous excerpt:

I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich ... The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community. Let me say here clearly ... ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. ... I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins ... is to do wrong. ... Let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings.

Right there we can see a religious fetishization of wealth and the wealthy. This sermon came out in the era of the misnamed Social Darwinism. 

The idea that the possession of money makes you better than other people is simultaneously one of the most American and anti-American ideas I can think of it. What should be obvious is that having money does not, in fact, make you better than other people.

So why is that so many people who don't have crazy money seem to genuflect before those that do? Why do we fall to our knees before the Golden Calf, when it's pretty clearly just gold paint?