Last week I posted some cautionary thoughts about the outcome of what we have to call the military coup in Egypt. More details on the incentives and habits, and indicative recent decisions, of the army mandarins are coming out, and the picture is not pretty, whether you care about political or economic freedom. A clientist kleptocracy is not going to do much for the millions of Egyptians who are famously living on two dollars a day. So far, it’s not unfair to view the “revolution” as little more than the regime getting rid of accessories, catspaws, and figureheads that have become unfashionable and unuseful, to better set itself up for another couple of decades of profitable rule.
I hope I’m wrong.
My impression is that Mubarak and friends were fronting the neo-liberal, international globalizing elite, but the economic demands of the neo-liberal globablizers were coming into conflict with the military’s domestic economic interests: a predictable phase-change, bump-in-the-road, on the road to neo-feudalism.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, etc.
IIRC, the Turkish military also had a large part of their economic sector for a long time. They were a lot richer than Egypt.
There are kleptocrats and kleptocrats. A kleptocrat who skims 10% off the top is not inconsistent with economic development-many countries have developed nicely with a fair amount of corruption. I could point to Japan, Italy, or the good old U.S. of A.
The question in my mind: does the Egyptian military want to run the country for its exclusive benefit, or merely wet its beak? Neither are good, but one is far less bad than the other.
Sounds like the post’s title shoulda oughta been a rock lyric. In fact, when I googled for that link, this came up immediately below it. A new internet meme?