Public agents took a cut, directly or indirectly, of income earned through the exercise of power, from adjudicating disputes, collecting taxes, to processing permits (in the Chinese context, we may add, attracting investments, promoting growth, and enforcing regulations). Weber calls such practices “owning the means of administration.” In the past, instead of directly collecting taxes from the populace, feudal kings and lords assigned local officials the right to harvest taxes from subjects in their jurisdictions. After surrendering a portion of taxes to the royal treasury, tax farmers were
...more
The tax farmer was a private capitalist
