Ultimately, the cult of the self-made man was a house of cards. Nevertheless, we are all deeply indoctrinated into this belief system of financial success or failure as evidence of morality or sin. Our inherited Puritan beliefs—of work as holy and idleness as evil—have been perverted by those wishing to plunder, to justify having already done so, and to ensure their ability to continue on. These beliefs have metastasized to the degree that today, what’s often being plundered are people themselves. It’s classic extraction economics.
