That really is over simplifying it. Part of what makes a nerd a nerd is his or her fairly inept social skills. Mastering futures trading doesn't improve one's social skills. And nerds still have to compete with more charming, comparably successful individuals.
A lot of those women swooning at the nerd at the 10th anniversary are not great prizes themselves, and probably never were.
Women do consider financial success attractive in a man, but it's not the only thing. And as I said, it's not really that rare and the duds still have to compete with more dominant, more assertive, and more sexually appealing successful men. That swooning you mention is really overstated,
ComputerWorld had a recent article on "Aspie's in IT". They referred to it as the "dark secret". Apparently it is pretty common. Some of the brightest, most productive people in IT are "Aspies". Many of them have no social life...and don't give a rat's ass about social standing.
They, (we, since I'm one too), usually have no social life because the social stuff "we just don't get" because it is another language which we don't see or hear, let alone understand. I've come to understand that it is genetic and built in to our brains. We try to cope, we try to work at it to make up for what comes naturally to others. But what is social recreation for others is work for us.
If there are only a hundred kids per grade and the culture is that bad, then it’s time for you and your neighbors to vote the school board out and get some folks in there who are willing to do their job.
As Z.C. wrote -- it is like that all over. And we've tried to replace the school board members but finding people to run for the board who are not either insiders or clueless is very hard, and having them win is harder. Last fall we had such a candidate -- she lost to an insider who denied the seriousness of the problems. The voters don't like messengers who bring bad news.