“It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting—corruption and favoritism, mostly—endemic to the system.”

—  Iain Banks, Culture series

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 1 (p. 91).

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Iain Banks139
Scottish writer 1954–2013

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