> I've always thought that every authoritarian regime is simply a company whose business is to manage and extract value from the country that they own, like any

> I've always thought that every authoritarian regime is simply a company whose business is to manage and extract value from the country that they own, like any other productive asset. Yes, they are predatory organizations by nature - in fact a closer operational model would be mafias. This was developed further by Murray Rothbard in his book "Anatomy of the State": https://cdn.mises.org/anatomy-of-the-state.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/anatomy-of-the-state.pdf