Elizabeth Holmes: guilty of crimes against capital
How the Holmes verdict lays bare the rot in our institutions
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
I read with interest the outcome of Elizabeth Holmes’ trial this morning, especially the news that she had been found guilty on some of the charges about defrauding investors, but not the charges about defrauding patients:
Notably, the jury of eight men and four women determined that Holmes was guilty on counts pertaining to investors, but none of the counts that pertained to defrauding patients. Over the course of its 11-week case, the government called just three patient witnesses to the stand, two of whom were individually tied to wire fraud counts.
Like the author of this article, as I followed the trial (mostly through listening eagerly to The Dropout), I was also struck by how little attention was paid to how ordinary people taking Theranos’ tests might have suffered physical harm or psychological distress from inaccurate, misleading results.
Instead, the trial was all about how Holmes lied to and deceived investors - people with plenty of wealth, capital and institutional power behind them already, and how her deception broke the terms of an important agreement which capital makes with all of us:
You (the supplicant) ask me (the capitalist) for capital, so that you can have a chance at achieving 1) a lottery ticket for admission into the halls of capital, and 2) other dreams like financial stability for yourself and your family, spending your time doing interesting work, or bettering people’s lives, which we conveniently use as a cover for 1)
I give you capital, and in return, you become an honest and diligent subject working hard at the task of turning my capital into more capital (‘returning value to shareholders’)
Elizabeth Holmes took money, and while it certainly seems she played the game of being a diligent subject (all that no-life-only-work founder mythmaking), she was found out as not being an honest one. Through the coercive power of the justice system (because who can be against justice, right?) we are asked to concentrate only on the great moral fault of lack of honesty, rather than the power relations that underlie it. Some people have monstrous, excessive wealth, and use that to drive others into slavishly sacrificing their lives, their mental wellbeing and physical health for just the mere chance of making it out of the labour trap - because winning the financialised capitalist game, nowadays, is made out to be the only way you can achieve freedom (Think of all the FIRE movements, a very rational response in this crazy world).
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The story that Holmes is an exceptional moral reprobate is not the only story that will be told to distract us from the fact that the ‘lords and ladies’ are essentially using the courts as a coercive mechanism to punish the breakers of this bargain. Many will try, and have already tried, to reduce this to a story about ‘dumb capital’ - the moral of the story being that startup founders should run back to the warm embrace of proper, professional VCs, who understand the Faustian bargain and the mutual deception that goes on when you raise money as a tech founder.
Let’s also consider - why shouldn’t we turn the lens on the people on the other side of this implicit bargain? Do they really deliver the dreams they promise to people, like financial stability, a chance at reform - a better world? Is their money and power deserved? Should they really be in charge?
What if we collectively reject this bargain altogether, instead of merely renegotiating the terms?
The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law
For me, speaking in many guises (as a startup founder, as a member of the professional managerial class, as part of the 99%) this enforcement against Elizabeth Holmes feels like the final straw. Not because I think that dishonesty should go unpunished, but because so many of our systems now are built in a way that protects the rich and powerful and serves only their interests, with the occasional sop or scapegoat thrown our way, like Elizabeth Holmes or Ghislaine Maxwell - what I would call deserving, but not destabilising targets of moral outrage. Collective anger gets channeled in a way that reinforces moral norms or creates new ones - but the new rules that emerge out of these events, while they may be important and needed for other reasons, do not fundamentally challenge the power base of capital.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back
I await the sentencing decision with interest. What great price must Holmes pay for her crimes against capital?
And what great price should capitalists pay for their crimes against us?
‘The Goose And The Common’ - 17th Century poem against English enclosure, taken from Union Songs.