Business
Where the state hands out industrial licenses, a firm skilled at the system can capture a large share of them. One business house won a fifth of all licenses over a decade, and that success itself became evidence used against it.
Industrialists who fund a political movement gain influence over the climate their own companies will operate in. Funding the independence movement and its main party helped create conditions in which local enterprise could grow against colonial dominance.
Politicians can gladly take money from business while feeling no obligation, or even contempt, toward the donor. Financing a party buys access, not lasting goodwill.
When the political mood turns against private business, the best-known industrialist becomes a convenient target. Ambitious politicians attack him to make their own name, whatever his past services to the cause.
Under central economic planning, a private firm can move early into basic industries yet still see years of preparation thrown away when the state refuses permission. The state decides which heavy industries private capital may enter.
Economic liberalisation can be attempted by stealth, through small changes made without announcing a change of direction. Because it rests on one leader rather than open public support, it dies when that leader goes.
A trading community can pass its business culture down as strict personal habits. These include abstinence, early hours, early marriage, regular routine, close family ties and switching off lights to avoid waste, with extravagance treated as the chief sin.