For the billionaires who have gotten lucky, through connections or timing or perhaps unfair competitive practices, which is another common thread of successful tech companies - they need that mythology. They need that garage inventor, dorm room genius mythology in order to make them socially acceptable. Because we as Americans prize the rags to riches, heroic lone entrepreneur - and so the facts must be adjusted to fit the narrative.

Investigative journalist Corey Pein explores the disrupted economy of Silicon Valley's rebooted gilded age - from the precarious nature of corporate serfdom hidden behind a sales pitch of entrepreneurial independence, to the capture of our politics (and press) by a class of libertarian oligarchs with no vision for the future beyond their own fortunes.

Corey is author of Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley from Metropolitan Books.