This is bogus because “the rich” we are talking about here only exist because of peace and security and these other institutions. The historical rich were not people who sold snacks; they were the people providing stability and security — they were warlords. Someone like Bezos or Gates is not able to oppress and doesn’t need to be bought off.
It is true that Bezos' and Gates' ascent depended on "peace and security and these other institutions", but wealth once acquired can easily be defended by burning those institutions to the ground; indeed that would probably increase their relative wealth through making almost everybody else worse off.
Hard to believe that Bezos or Gates would find it difficult to hire
enough mercenaries to defend their position at the top of the social
hierarchy.
History certainly seems to suggest that the ruling class
virtually always manage to do this. The main way in which the ruling
class looses power has been being displaced by other members of the
ruling class, which is why dictators are always especially suspicious
of their own army and secret service leaders. For example, after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia became a fiefdom of 4 oligarchs
pretty quickly, and they were displaced by a high-ranking ex-KGB
operative (Putin) and his people, i.e. by a gang from another power
center.
What historical evidence to the contrary would you put forward?
The evidence you cite is actually the evidence I would cite. If Bezos and Gates were to hire mercenary armies — and really needed them, because the uniformed services of the United States were not available — they would need to rapidly change the character of their leadership. They would be a different kind of elite, if they managed to make the transition at all.
My point is that the kind of elite we get in a context of peace and security is very different from the kind we get outside of it. Russia is run by a former member of the security forces, and that is often what happens in a time of disorder. How many other former leaders of Russia were drawn from the security forces, and when?
Seven of the eight leaders of the Soviet Union were military men — all but the last. Gorbachev was trained as a lawyer and worked as a bureaucrat of some kind.
Yeltsin, a civil engineer, followed Gorbachev in 1991 as the first President of Russia. Putin followed Yeltsin in 1999.
