Cui bono is often translated, from the Latin, "Who benefits?" It is a way of looking for who did a crime. Who benefited from the crime?

"Cui," literally, means, "to whose," and "bono" means "good."

To whose good is it that this things happened?

If you live in the shiny part of an empire, you don't have to do the crime to benefit from the crime. I live in the shiny part of an empire.

Fernand Braudel, the historian, wrote about the difference between the mess and desperation of the edge of the empire, the dwellings built of trash, and the shiny faces and shiny shop windows at the center. He was smart about how the shine meeds the grime and the hunger; they are all part of one thing.