Rent seeking occurs when a government prioritizes capturing existing wealth rather than creating new value. It thrives on control, extraction, and patronage rather than economic productivity. In such a system, ordinary citizens are sources of revenue, not partners in governance. Corruption and favoritism become rational survival strategies, and businesses close not because of incompetence, but because they cannot navigate an extractive, arbitrary system.
The Abiy Ahmed government exemplifies this model. Taxes and regulations are unpredictable and often enforced punitively. Small businesses are suffocated, trade networks are weakening, and unemployment is rising. The regime diverts massive resources into vanity projects—parks, corridor developments, and “Digital Ethiopia”—which create political optics rather than jobs or sustainable economic growth. At the same time, spending on weapons and ongoing internal conflicts, including the Tigray and Amhara crises, drains capital without expanding productive capacity.
The Ethiopian government’s approach is deeply insulated from public accountability. Criticism is often met with retaliation or increased control. Policies become more coercive when challenged rather than more responsive. This is because authority does not flow from the people. Elections lack credibility, public opinion is ignored, and the state treats citizens as subjects rather than partners. Decision-making is emotional, reactive, and focused on consolidating power, not building trust.
History provides clear lessons. In the late Roman Empire, heavy taxation funded military expansion and imperial luxury. Farmers abandoned their land, cities emptied, and trade froze. Skilled labor disappeared. Instead of reforming, the state increased extraction. Economic collapse eroded loyalty, local uprisings became frequent, and the empire gradually disintegrated under the weight of internal pressure and external invasions. Extraction without legitimacy led to systemic collapse.
Pre-revolutionary France provides another example. The monarchy overtaxed peasants and urban workers while protecting the elite from fiscal burdens. Bread prices soared, unemployment rose, and trade stagnated. Frustration and economic despair culminated in uprisings that overthrew the monarchy violently. The state’s survival depended not on consent but coercion, and once the public could no longer endure the pressure, the regime fell. The lesson is clear: when people can no longer survive under rent-seeking authority, revolt is inevitable.
Ethiopia today mirrors these patterns. Trade is contracting as businesses close under tax pressure and regulatory uncertainty. Unemployment is rising, especially among youth, while the state continues to extract wealth for political priorities and vanity projects. The regime has shown repeatedly that public opinion and constructive criticism are met with repression or further punitive measures. Like Rome and France, the authority of the state is not derived from popular consent, making it brittle and reactive.
When trade fails and unemployment grows, the stage is set for social unrest. History shows that rent-seeking governments rarely survive once economic and social pressures converge. Uprisings and protests are not distant threats—they are natural consequences of policies that crush productivity and ignore the population. Coercion may delay the inevitable, but it cannot prevent it. Systems built on extraction and repression implode from within.
The Abiy Ahmed regime’s path appears to be repeating history. Rome collapsed because farmers fled and trade froze under excessive taxation and extraction. France fell because economic desperation fueled revolution. Ethiopia risks a similar fate: overtaxed citizens, destroyed businesses, rising unemployment, and a government insulated from legitimacy cannot produce long-term stability. Rent-seeking states may survive briefly, but history shows their collapse is ultimately unavoidable.
The lesson is stark and urgent: governments that overtax, crush trade, ignore public opinion, and spend on power rather than productivity erode their own foundations. Ethiopia’s current trajectory mirrors centuries of historical failure. Without course correction that restores economic opportunity, respects citizens, and limits extraction, the fate of Abiy Ahmed’s regime cannot be different from the empires of the past. Extraction without consent is a path to collapse
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