Table of Contents
ToggleAt the end of Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood, Daniel Day-Lewis's character, oil tycoon Daniel Plainview, is old and richer than Croesus of ancient Greece.
He beat the pastor, played by Paul Dano, to death with a bowling pin. Dano's character, Eli Sunday, is Plainview's arch-rival from his heyday, and he's back to sell the oil-rich land he owns. But Plainview doesn't need the land anymore, because he's already sucked all the oil out of the neighboring land "like drinking a milkshake through a straw," one of the most famous monologues in modern film history.
Desperate, Eli begged for money. Plainview refused, instead chasing him down the bowling alley before gleefully killing him. Afterwards, the butler came to see what had happened. "I'm finished," Plainview shouted.
No matter how many times I watch this movie, I have never interpreted this line as "I'm doomed, I have to bear the consequences of my actions."
On the contrary, this statement means that Plainview has completed his journey. Through the accumulation of wealth and power, he has reached a realm beyond the moral universe. In other words, he no longer needs to pretend that the rules of human society apply to him.
Bezos' Campfire Party: 80 Celebrities and a Plague
In 2018, I was invited to Jeff Bezos's "Campfire" party in Santa Barbara, California. It's an annual event where the Amazon founder invites more than 80 guests each year—celebrities, artists, intellectuals, and anyone else he finds interesting—to stay at a private resort for three nights.
I recently turned down an offer from Amazon to poach my film and television career from Disney, and perhaps because of that, Bezos's team invited me to the campfire, probably to show me just how much influence he has.
On a warm Thursday in October, a fleet of private jets was dispatched to the airports in Van Nuys and New York to transport guests to Santa Barbara in the most dignified manner. At the time, I only had a general idea of who else would be coming: celebrities, wealthy people, influential people, and myself. The staff told me the guest list wouldn't be sent out until it arrived. Families were welcome; each child would be provided with a nanny.
So my wife and I flew from Austin to Los Angeles with our two kids, and then took a 45-minute private jet north, with a TV mogul and a comedian on board.
Bezos booked the entire Biltmore resort and the beach club across the street. He hired a security company from Las Vegas to ensure our safety and privacy. The weather there felt "expensive," and when we were taken to our room, there was a gift bag for us filled with luxury goods.
Every morning, we gathered in the lecture hall for talks; if you've ever watched a TED Talk, you'll know the format. The year I went, a current Supreme Court justice was interviewed, and a neuroscientist discussed advancements in prosthetic technology. In the afternoons and evenings, we were encouraged to exchange ideas at cocktail parties and four-course dinners—no specific purpose set, simply put, to network with some of the most elite people on Earth.
The most common question I hear is: "Why am I here?"
"Why am I here?" That's what a heavy metal singer from the 1980s asked. "Why am I here?" That's what Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists ask, that's what renowned anthropologists ask, that's what presidential historians ask. Only movie stars and billionaires don't ask, because they've done it before.
There used to be a tour called "Ideas Festival" that many tech billionaires would host. If you made the right list, you could spend a whole year traveling the world, eating Wagyu beef, and discussing with the most famous talk show hosts in history how to make the world a better place.
That's how the weekend started. And it ended like this: my wife slipped and broke her wrist on the wet grass, and my two kids and I all got enterovirus. I'm not kidding. One of us went home with a sling, and the other three had itchy, painful red blisters all over their faces and limbs. If you're looking for God's hints about whether hanging out with the world's richest people is right for your future, you should be aware that He doesn't just send one plague at a time, but two.
We never went back to the "campfire" event again, nor were we ever invited again.
The following evening, while drinking, the head of a major talent agency asked me how I felt about the weekend. I said, "I've spent my entire career trying to figure out how the world works. I didn't know I could just come here and ask the people who run it." I was joking in a way. A lead singer of an alternative country band wasn't running the world, nor was a well-known author who was later accused of misconduct.
But at that resort, as an exclusive invitee, I now fully understand what people mean when they talk about "elites".
Sitting in a lecture hall, pencil in hand, listening to a renowned chef explain his humanitarian work, it's easy to feel that the world's problems are in our grasp. But looking around at the faces I've only seen in magazines or on screen, I have a disturbing realization: this is the arrogance that comes with achievement. Being declared a genius in one field leads to the belief that one is a genius in every field.
The 80 of us sitting there, with a combined net worth exceeding that of a small city, were insignificant compared to the organizer's wealth and power. How did he view this event—as a first step towards changing the world, or a performance showcasing his influence and reach?
Bezos was everywhere that weekend, wearing a tight T-shirt, laughing too loudly, his arms around his teenage sons.
At the time, he had just become the world's second "hundred-billionaire," with a net worth of approximately $112 billion, roughly half of what it is today. This previously unimaginable wealth made him unique on a planet of 8 billion people, a fact you could feel right in your room.
Even the richest and most famous among us are drawn to this unattainable wealth.
Everything is free, nothing else matters.
Although we didn't know it at the time, Bezos's first marriage ended a few weeks later. My strongest impression of his wife that weekend was her melancholy, despite Bezos's fervent performance as a good husband and father.
Looking back, what remains in my mind is that performance. In 2018, Jeff Bezos still acted as if he believed others' impressions of him mattered, that negative news would affect his financial and social value. He still believed his actions had consequences. He hadn't liberated himself, like Daniel Plainview in the movie, breaking free from human rules.
Eight years later, Bezos, along with two other of the world's richest people, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, had apparently left the world of consequences. They floated in a planet-sized "sensory deprivation pod," where only they could judge their own actions.
The closer I get to the world of wealth, the more I realize that being truly rich is not about accumulating enough money to buy a superyacht, a private jet, or a million acres of land.
Being truly wealthy means that everything becomes free. Any asset can be bought, but nothing is truly lost, because for someone about to become a trillionaire, any loss is unlikely to significantly alter their global status or personal power.
For them,
The word "failure" has lost its meaning.
This feeling of invulnerability has profound psychological consequences. If everything is free and nothing matters, then the world and other people are merely objects you manipulate if you even acknowledge their existence.
This is different from typical narcissism, which is an exaggerated but fragile self-image that may be hiding deep-seated insecurity. I'm talking about something else, a self-definition in which the individual expands to the size of the universe, and the universe disappears.
Recently, someone asked Trump, a billionaire and the richest president in American history, if anything could check his power. He replied, "There is one thing. It's my own morality, my own brain. That's the only thing that can stop me."
It is not domestic or international law, not the will of the voters, not God, or the moral compass of civic and religious life over the past few centuries.
Decades of developmental psychology research show that moral reasoning develops through the "consequences of doing things," which are not necessarily punishments, but rather experiencing the impact of your actions on others, receiving honest feedback, and having to face reality as it is, rather than as you wish it to be.
It's not that rich people have become evil, but rather that their environment has stopped teaching them things that those who are not rich are forced to learn simply because they live in a world where everything has a counterforce.
When you can "buy out" any mistake, fire anyone who disagrees with you, and your social circle consists entirely of people who need your help, the fundamental human mechanism for learning that "others are real" is shut down.
Empathy has become a "weakness of Western civilization".
When Peter Thiel said, "I no longer believe that liberty and democracy are compatible," he wasn't talking about your freedom; he was talking about his own. You don't exist. When Musk wielded a chainsaw and hacked at the federal government, calling it DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), it was like making a joke only his own people understood. He was demonstrating an attitude that "nothing matters": poverty, chaos, human suffering—none of it matters.
He had a great time, and it didn't matter that the whole destructive operation ultimately yielded no real financial gain. To him, the outcome was set in stone; he could only win, because losing was meaningless.
Since the 2024 US presidential election, a philosophical shift has emerged on the right, particularly among tech billionaires, who have begun to demonize the concept of empathy. Musk has called empathy "a fundamental weakness of Western civilization."
He sees it as a weapon used by liberal societies to attack others, forcing rational people to act against their own interests. Empathy is what others do to you, a loophole they exploit, a backdoor that allows them to access your resources and attention.
This denial of empathy as a human value provides a fig leaf for those who don't want to feel anything. If empathy is a problem, then the lack of empathy is not a flaw—but a strength.
I finally met Bezos at lunch on the last day of the campfire. My wife had broken her wrist the night before, and I went over to thank him for his hospitality. He asked how our campfire experience was.
The night before, we stood by the pool at the beach club, watching a group of water ballet dancers flawlessly perform their routine. I chatted briefly with a well-known novelist who said, "I really don't understand why I'm here." A famous rock singer was about to begin an unplugged performance. The celebrity chef made paella. Deep within my skin, a cruel pimple was slowly forming.
The next morning, my wife fell, and I found myself sitting in a black SUV, being quickly driven by a team of private security guards to the back door of an emergency room in Santa Barbara, where she received immediate treatment. When we got back, we happened to see the Supreme Court justice connecting with us via Zoom from Washington.
"How was your campfire experience?" Bezos asked me an hour later. Because I'm an honest person, and because I've organized events myself, I thought he'd want to know if something went wrong, but his team reacted quickly and was a great help. To be honest, I wasn't blaming him at all, nor was I trying to extort money from the richest person in the world. I was simply offering Bezos, a husband and father, a brief personal connection.
But when I told him what had happened, Bezos looked terrified.
He didn't say "I'm sorry," he didn't say "Is there anything else you need?" He made a face, and then in an instant, an assistant took him away. When offered an opportunity to express empathy, even if it was feigned, he chose to run away.
Hours later, on the private plane home, a well-known film producer handed my wife a blanket. My children's faces were covered in pimples. Red bumps were rising under my fingernails.
The world has always been run by the rich. During the Gilded Age (1877-1900), capitalist robbers, under the guise of their ruthlessness in accumulating wealth, hired Pinkerton detectives to assassinate striking union members.
But they interact directly with the world around them, using their wealth and power to forcibly shape it into the most profitable form. While today's billionaires are clearly also manipulating society to maximize their own profits, something else is happening, detached from real cause and effect, and from meaning and history.
These people no longer feel the need to change the world to succeed, because they are assured of success regardless of what the rest of us are like.
"I'm finished!" Daniel Plainview shouted, happily lying on the shiny floor of his own kingdom.
He had just committed a serious crime, but he had never felt so free.
This article, originally titled " Everything Is Free and Nothing Matters ," was published in the May 2026 issue of The Atlantic. The author, Noah Hawley, is a key creator of the Fargo, Legion, and Alien: Earth series, and should be familiar to fans of science fiction television.
Related reports
