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Comment by anonyme-honteux | Hacker News Reader

Founder worship is a straightforward evolution of a general US/protestant (See Max Weber) worship of rich people. It's here to stay because that permeates US culture completely. Most don't even notice it.

I do because I was raised in a roman-catholic country rich people are not supposed to be worshipped - straightforward interpretation of the Bible.

On the other hand when I read stories of Elon Musk the real-life Tony Spark whose by the sheer force of its genius brain is going to save Humanity by making it multi-galactic, that does remind me of the hagiographies I had to read when I was young - those unbelievable but nonetheless believed biographies of the saints of the catholic pantheon.

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That's an interesting point. I'm from Germany and we definitely have founder worship here (but we have fewer founders, and these days a lot of the 'startups' are just projects by students looking for state subsidies, not private money) but we also have a lot of protestants. Is it not the same in Spain or Italy?

Max Weber's "Protestant Ethic" did not refer to the teaching of Luther that are mainstream in Germany but specifically to the Calvinists and Pietists that brought their value to the US.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...

When he discussed it in the Protestant Ethic, he used Lutheranism as the chief example of the unio mystica that contrasted sharply with the ascetic posture. Later he would associate "Luther, the symbolic exponent of bureaucratic despotism, with the ascetic hostility to Eros — an example of Weber's sporadic tendency to link together bureaucratic and ascetic modes of life and to oppose both from mystical and aristocratic perspectives."

However, Weber saw the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic not in Lutheranism, which was too concerned with the reception of divine spirit in the soul, but in Calvinistic forms of Christianity.[6]: 32–33 The trend was carried further still in Pietism.

The US definitely has always had a strong Calvinist bent to it and there's been discussion of the increasing influence of Calvinist thought amongst Evangelism in recent times - see "creeping Calvinism" as it's been called:

http://targuman.org/2016/07/21/seeking-comfort-in-crisis-cre...

https://www.reformation21.org/mos/1517/creeping-calvinism

Interesting, thank you for pointing out that it wasn't necessarily about protestants in general.

Which does beg the question though: given that Germany isn't Calvinist, and we still have founder worship, is Calvinism really the reason founders are worshiped in the US?

> Founder worship is a straightforward evolution of a general US/protestant (See Max Weber) worship of rich people. It's here to stay because that permeates US culture completely. Most don't even notice it.

Conversely complaints about founder worship typically drip with ressentiment. It's funny how all of this anchors back to Nietzsche's expansive take on the influence of Christianity in Western culture.

I don’t think it’s about worshipping rich people as it is about worshipping success. The money is just a result of being successful. They are willing to look past the survivorship bias because let’s face it working for someone else always feels second class to doing something “on your own” (air quotes btw).

People look to the survivors and see that it paid off in the end. They don’t need to bow down to no one and they’re able to exit the hamster wheel.

Case in point I know of someone who sold their small company for like 20 million dollars. Peanuts compared to billion dollar exits but gargantuan for most regular people. This dude was apparently some regular dude who sold the company in his 40s and he basically quit and focuses full time on his family. No longer needs to work 40 plus hours a week nor play office politics. He’s set and so is his family.

In support of your point, the worship is mostly directed at people who made money themselves. Maybe a small inheritance helped bootstrap them, but they have clearly accomplished something.

By contrast, can you even name the heirs of the Rockefeller fortune?

> worshipping success... The money is just a result of being successful.

Except this still defines 'success' as "making a lot of money". If making money is a result of being successful, then if someone doesn't make a lot of money, can they be considered successful, and how? I challenge you to name three contemporary people worshipped as successful but aren't considered successful in terms of their net worth.

Side note: A $20 million payoff is still rich and absolutely out of reach for most. A person working full-time at $15/hr could work for 600 years and still be $2 million short of $20 million.

of course I can. There are way too many researchers and scientists to list who I consider successful who aren’t multi millionaires. They are successful in a different context.

The discussion was about worshipping startup founders and success was in that context. My point is that people like us (tech workers, assuming u might be one too) look up more to escaping the hamster wheel of promotion driven development and other bullshit in favor of just living life. Startups are a capitalist game. You don’t need to play it, you’re free to do something else.

> I consider successful

I specifically said "worshipped as successful" to require not just personal opinion. I mean worshipped in the same way as Jobs, Gates, Musk, Bezos, or even entertainers like Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Lady Gaga, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and so on, are worshipped.

Isn’t that subjective too? I don’t worship Bezos but I like Bill Gates and Elon. Like I said you’re comparing apples to oranges there’s no comparison between Elon and Oprah and Lady Gaga besides “they have a lot of followers and money”. How they did it is different and only Elon would be in the startup context.

I mean Steven Hawking, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Higgs, Tim Berners Lee, etc are all “worshipped as successful” by many people since they’re popular and well known. In my circle of casual science fans (we aren't scientists) we worship these people because we like science.

Success leads to money. Unless you’re in a commie country where it might lead to gulag lol.

> Success leads to money. Unless you’re in a commie country where it might lead to gulag lol.

Thank you for your analysis. It is both penetrating and diffuse.

Am I wrong?

If someone doesn't make money, they aren't successful? That's how I read it. Which leaves open the question, are there three people who didn't make money yet who are broadly considered successful enough to attract worshippers from among the general population? If so, what makes them successful, if not net worth?

No I was saying that at least in capitalist western countries like the USA usually if you’re good at something and successful at it, the result is a lot of money.

I’m a software engineer and I’d say I’m pretty good considering I always rank in the top 10%, so it makes sense to me that I’m paid a lot of money.

I’m starting a company and I plan on doing my best to succeed on it. If I do, my success will lead to money.

What I’m trying to say (esl so it’s hard for me maybe to convey) is that money is a side effect of being successful aka being good at something.

> I don’t think it’s about worshipping rich people as it is about worshipping success.

That's an issue too, because "success" increasingly looks dependent on timing more than anything else. Your company could be a money-burning endeavour and you could still come out rich if you impress the right VCs and time your IPO.

Jack Dorsey and Evan Spiegel are billionaires, yet their companies lose hundreds of millions pretty much every single year. Same for Shopify, Uber and many other "unicorns".

> Case in point I know of someone who sold their small company for like 20 million dollars. Peanuts compared to billion dollar exits but gargantuan for most regular people. This dude was apparently some regular dude who sold the company in his 40s and he basically quit and focuses full time on his family. No longer needs to work 40 plus hours a week nor play office politics. He’s set and so is his family.

Good for him, but he’s still no god. I’m not worshiping any man.

Success is what you should try to emulate. Imo.

What that means is unique to each of us b

> protestant worship of rich people.

What? The historically protestant countries are where social democracy have been the strongest, compared to catholic countries.

You think it's only the U.S. who worship rich people?

For example Bernard Arnault is currently the richest man on earth and the cult of Bernard Arnault in France is pretty much inexistant.

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