Especially if progress is represented by a competition that was designed to be elitist, self-enriching and disruptive.
Second, many of those in power are "princelings", the offspring or sons-in-law of China's revolutionary families, who have become a self-enriching, hereditary class.
That may be a (very self-enriching) game he's playing with his followers, but it's not a very imaginative approach to painting.
There are rivals and human-rights violators in the old gang, too, but in the main, these states seek stability and the (self-enriching) status quo.
The U.S.-Saudi alliance is a self-enriching bargain between the two countries' élites, sustained without mutual understanding or sympathy between their publics.
Many people regarded the country's top executives as members of a self-enriching élite, which lines its pockets by cutting wages and shifting jobs overseas.
That it is not is only because so many of the demands made by FIFA's self-enriching, self-interested guardians of the game are so comic.
But since Mr Zuma came to power, an extraordinary array of senior civil servants, as well as thousands of lesser minions, have been sacked, prosecuted and even convicted for their self-enriching shenanigans.
It would be good to think that a generation with better values would change this, but this is difficult when the greedy fat cats at the top set the self-enriching rules.
But "Inside Job," an infuriating documentary by Mr. Ferguson, whose "No End in Sight" is a critically acclaimed documentary about the events leading up to the Iraq war, assembles the pieces of the Wall Street debacle into a persuasive and damning portrait of 30 years of self-enriching, public-be-damned collusion within the financial sector.
This suggests he might last no longer than the succession of short-lived supremos that preceded him.Given the blurred boundaries between rebels with a local cause, terrorists waging global war and self-enriching criminals, signing peace pacts with insurgents' leaders is no guarantee of peace.
