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It's time to stop hero worshiping the tech billionaires

Elon Musk was named Person of the Year. We are outsourcing important public policy decisions to unaccountable businessmen, says columnist Noam Cohen.

But to fall under the sway of Musk even for, say, his work making electric cars a stylish alternative to gas-guzzlers, means accepting his self-aggrandizing worldview and all the collateral damage that produces: the allegations of indifference toward workers' safety, the resistance to government regulations (financial, transportation, workplace), the plan to clutter the atmosphere with satellites. There may be reason to hope, however, that this end of the year swooning represents a high-water mark in public appeal and as the pendulum swings back all this attention may expose the dark side of a Muskian world. Such misogyny is also never far from the surface with Musk, and takes on greater meaning in light of a recent lawsuit by six female workers who, according to The Washington Post, say they were "subjected to lewd comments and catcalling, physically intimate touching and discrimination."

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