>>20780521I am well aware of that, however in suburban US case there are HOAs that can enforce maintenance. Dacha settlements do have self-elected leaderships who manage these sort of things to a degree but these lack the proper jurisdiction to enforce everything and the fees they collect (at least in our case) are like $10/mo and go towards keeping a guard at the entrance and disposing of garbage. A more modern type of settlement, cottage villages, tend to have an external authority, in the form of a management company, that can enforce much more so the infrastructure is usually better maintained, however the fees are an order of magnitude higher and there's more room for corruption.
Going back to the topic of patronage, like you said, hundreds of years ago patrons were much more widespread. This has also been the case here. It's really disheartening that this has gone out of style and oligarchs have completely withdrawn from the commonfolk. They'd be treated much differently — and remembered more fondly — if they were to fund hospitals, artists (>implying there's modern arm worth funding) and the like.
Then again, with the recent war going on, there have been some large donations to certain fundraisers. Now and then someone dumps a few month's worth of mean salary. There's also the same guy who keeps buying tractors for the troops. All of these are semi-anonymous, with only the first name being known, so maybe glory isn't their end-goal. I assume at least some of the patrons of the past did it to be remembered by future generations. E.g. the Tretyakovskaya gallery museum in Moscow is named after the merchant patrons who founded it. Their name probably wouldn't have been as well-known centuries later otherwise.
Well, Americans have libraries funded by and named after presidents, right? Clinton's name is all over the town his library is located in apparently, watched some Russian vlogger visit it a couple of years ago. Kind of egotistical but why not.
