How to gain control of "the people."

"And through covetousness [lust] shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you." 2 Peter 2:3

If I can gain access to you self interest, i.e., to what you are lusting after, i.e., to what you covet and offer to help you attain it, gaining your trust, I "own" you. It is just that simple.

"If we have the power or authority to establish the necessary conditions, the predicted behaviors [our potential ability to influence or control the behavior of groups] will follow." "We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood." "We know how to change the opinions of an individual in a selected direction, without his ever becoming aware of the stimuli which changed his opinion." "We know how to influence the ... behavior of individuals by setting up conditions which provide satisfaction for needs of which they are unconscious, but which we have been able to determine." We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do." "By a careful design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behavior—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that case the question of freedom never arises." (Carl Rogers, on becoming a person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)