Homo Klep

Kleptocracy can work best for Homo sapiens [making some of us rich before all of us die (and a good part of the bulk of the biosphere as well)] only if we're not too sapient.

Our institutions will serve kleptocracy best if its functionaries are none too self-aware. That's why kleptocracy (aka: civilization) will always jail, torture, murder its Socrates, its Jesus, its Galileo — if not in the name of the church then in the name of the state.