Every great accumulation of wealth or power rests on fraud or force

Evidence

But if you will take note of the mode of proceeding of men, you will see that all those who come to great riches and great power have obtained them either by fraud or by force; and afterwards, to hide the ugliness of acquisition, they make it decent by applying the false title of earnings to things they have usurped by deceit or by violence. And those who, out of either little prudence or too much foolishness, shun these modes always suffocate in servitude or poverty. For faithful servants are always servants and good men are always poor. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 430 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Young millennial entrepreneurs like Holmes fell prey to harmful levels of magical thinking, which writer Amanda Montell defines succinctly as “the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect external events.” Holmes operated as if everything would somehow work out despite the repeated failure of Theranos’s core technology. A more disciplined swindler might have bailed sooner. Even after exposure, Holmes doubled down on CNBC, dismissing a damning Wall Street Journal exposé with the kind of motivational aphorism found on dorm room posters: “This is what happens when you work to change things, and first they think you’re crazy, then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 571 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Wealth and power in bourgeois society come from fraud or force concealed as earnings — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 430; Wealth alone lets elite grifters operate as obvious frauds without consequence; High-status swindlers can genuinely deceive themselves with magical thinking — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 571

Broader Connections

• Wealth and power in bourgeois society come from fraud or force concealed as earnings #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 430
• Wealth alone lets elite grifters operate as obvious frauds without consequence #exemplifies (0.72)
• High-status swindlers can genuinely deceive themselves with magical thinking #qualifies (0.70) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 571