Your description is almost word-for-word the complaint the Soviet middle class had about the Soviet system.
--- On Wed, 6/17/09, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
>
>From what she said in this
> and the previous book, the economic issue is a huge factor
> -- for people who are poor, as well as for people in the
> striving professional-managerial class who go off, get
> Western educations, return to Iran to improve their country
> with their degrees in engineering, computer science, etc.
> but are stymied every step of the way by corruption and
> religious hypocrisy. (Her tales of getting hit on by the
> mullahs when she interviews them would be the stuff of
> comedy were it not for how creepy they also are.) Her
> husband was a big open source champion, for instance, and
> tried to get the government to invest in open source so they
> could improve the country, by-pass international
> copyright/trade agreements, and still get stuff done. Not a
> chance. Endeavors like that are quickly colonized by an
> inept and corrupt government doling out the business idea to
> an untalented crony who promptly destroys its possibilities
> in pyramid schemes and graft.
>