If you look how every dictatorship works, they always make sure that the military and police force do well. That and they look the other way when police steal from people.
Sure they do. And to do that, they need a functioning society, at least functioning well enough to produce the things that the military and the police need and want. (And that means that the police can't steal too much from people.)
A dictatorship can't be just a thugocracy. It has to keep society running, perhaps not up to western capitalist standards, but at least above the point of collapse.
And there is always prison labor that you can depend on. Especially with private prisons. Prison labor is already being used to fight wildfires in LA for instance and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. That’s cheap labor and another benefit it’s all those “drug dealing thugs” anyway.
