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You can categorize kleptocracies by the incentive structures they create; Trump=
| https://i.imgur.com/ovcBe0z.png | 01/13/26 |
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Date: January 13th, 2026 8:41 PM Author: https://i.imgur.com/ovcBe0z.png Philippines-style. Anyone who occupies the office gets the benefits of the job, and the fight among officials is to get patronage positions. Someone gets a govt jerb, and on the first week a mysterious check full of cash appears in their office. And then the next week another envelope of cash appears. The total amount is 50x whatever this person's offfial salary is. It all comes from sundry filipinos who have to pay licensing and registration fees and and all kinds of other fees to some minister of something. Chicago also has this system where you need 14 different local agencies to approve any construction project, the the people who head these agencies are friends of the mayor and the jerbs pay $450k/yr. That's machine corruption.
The other kind, in general, is the Indonesian kind, where it's a legit shakedown and anyone extracting a bribe is doing something to earn it. If you just sit on your ass in an office you'll only get the government salary, but if you got a gig operating a border crossing you can milk it for all it's worth, provided you are kicking up to the right people upstairs. If your patronage network gets disturbed, your ability to threaten people on the ground is effectively zero because locals can now kill you with impunity. These are kleptocracies where kleptocrats can earn higher returns on average, but there's a degree of political risk they have to contend with. |