Thorstein Veblen Quote

There are all degrees of this helplessness that characterizes the common lot. So much so that certain classes, professions, and occupations — such as the clergy, the military, the courts, police, and legal profession — are perhaps to be classed as belonging primarily with the vested interests, although they can scarcely be counted as vested interests in their own right, but rather as outlying and subsidiary vested interests whose tenure is conditioned on their serving the purposes of those principal and self-directing vested interests whose tenure rests immediately on large holdings of invested wealth. Read more at location 2158

The Vested Interests and the Common Man (1919)