Trust the Con Artist?

One of my favorite anecdotes from The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers is about a famous con artist. In their telling, through a series of machinations, the con artist who was posing as a government official was able to get a famous French Industrialist to “purchase” the Eiffel Tower and he would make a fortune by turning it into scrap metal. At the meeting to culminate the sale, the Industrialist started to get cold feet because there were a lot of unanswered questions. The con was not going to work. 

Instead of panicking, the con artist tried something unusual: complaining. He complained that this project was top-secret, difficult, and time consuming. He was under-appreciated and underpaid. So much paperwork and late nights. His wife deserved some gift due to all the time he was slaving away. Suddenly, the Industrialist was relieved. The complaints of the “government official” were a thinly veiled request for a bribe. Only a mid-level underpaid bureaucrat would be asking for a bribe, therefore, the sale of the Eiffel Tower was legitimate. The Industrialist, completely conned,  turned over the certified check and several thousand Francs in bribe money. 

We are seeing a lot of what looks like bribery in plain sight. Personal Crypto, Meme Coins, a plane, a golf course in Viet Nam and more. No outcry about the abuses? Maybe a sense of defeat, exhaustion, or feeling that  nothing will change anyway. A significant portion of the population just shrugs. Many excuses are offered about the corruption, but it may be like the con artist in Paris and the Industrialist who might have said, “You’re corrupt?!? Of course I trust you.”