There are a few discussions and even some studies about the rapid effects of wealth and political power, because they change how other people interact with you, it essentially gaslights you into thinking you're less fallible than the rest of us.

We can kind of see it between the original Star Wars trilogy (when Lucas still had people able to critique him) and the prequel series (now that ILM was huge and he was ultra-wealthy).

Twenty-first century billionaires become two degrees of separation removed from commoners at all (except the help they hire themselves), and as Paul Krugman notes, lobbyists are better dressed and more well spoken than nerdy economists. It becomes very easy for a rich due to create a self-aggrandizing information silo, in which every rich-dude intuition and conspiracy theory is affirmed.

And the one thing that consistently feels good is seeing their assets and selves getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So yeah, it really is an illness.