When addressing politics, we must accustom ourselves to think and speak about the actions and interests of specific, named leaders rather than thinking and talking about fuzzy ideas like the national interest, the common good, and the general welfare.
唔…虽然大概不是一回事但我联想到德媒报道中国的什么决议的时候，不说“中国”而总是说“北京”，报道俄罗斯也不说俄罗斯，而是“克里姆林宫”
there are virtually no democrats with longer tenures. However, if the chart were extended, we would see that of the autocrats that make it to ten years, two-thirds of them will still be in office after twenty years.
High taxes will inevitably drive people to hide their work and profits. This makes monitoring their income difficult. Furthermore, the large bureaucracy required to run a comprehensive tax system […] can be prohibitively expensive. […] To avoid becoming a slave of their own tax collectors, autocrats often use indirect taxation instead. With indirect taxes, the cost of the tax is passed on to someone other than the person actually paying it. For instance, sellers pay sales taxes to municipal governments but sellers pass the cost on to buyers, making sales taxes indirect.
the easiest way to compensate the police for their loyalty—including their willingness to oppress their fellow citizens—is to give them free rein to be corrupt. Pay them so little that they can’t help but realize it is not only acceptable but necessary for them to be corrupt.
Corruption […] provides the means to ensure regime loyalty without having to pay good salaries, and it guarantees the prosecutorial means to ferret out any beneficiaries who fail to remain loyal. What could be better from a leader’s perspective?
也是一只自由泳的小鸟
@[email protected]
