In indefinitely repeated games you get very different play styles than in games with a known end point. In particular, with repeated Prisoner's Dilemma cooperation can be maintained as long as it isn't known when the game is ending. Once the endpoint is known, cooperation is no longer a stable strategy.
My sense of what we're seeing, is that the ruling class sees the end of the game coming and they changed their strategy. The new strategy is a brazen cash grab, because there's no longer a benefit to cooperation.