Mafiastan

I've been reading Fisk for quite a long time and he generally gets it right.

So it's not that I disagree with his premise, but I'm not sure, as Fisk seems to be, that this is necessarily a bad thing.

How is Mafiastan any different from the status quo in most of the world?

The imaginary elimination of so-called corruption merely replaces under-the-table schmiergeld with "official" application fees, processing fees, handling fees, and so on.

You eliminate corruption by institutionalizing it.

If anything, the under-the-table part of the corruption pie is going to folks outside the regular corruption hierarchy...

Schmiergeld represents the democratization of corruption.

Which is why every now and again you'll see the most corrupt regimes launch anti-corruption drives.

It's not that they want to get rid of corruption.

They just want to get rid of the competition.