Societies are not troubled by the ‘rich and powerful’ being the same people, so long as the connection seems natural. High power, high status and high net worth will go together if they are all outward signs of great personal quality (especially when a respected religion affirms the sign as divine). Early social sciences largely endorsed the coincidence of money and power as inevitable and acceptable. Political economy identified income and wealth as generated by contribution to production and innovation, and as generative of large- employer status and market power. So not only would power and status gravitate to those who made money (and money and status inevitably flow to those who used power constructively), but also the consequent unequal distribution was a necessary source of incentives for beneficial economic activity, and social progress. Sociology identified a distribution of natural abilities whose winners could be expected both to wield great power and attain great wealth, in a way that could benefit all, including those of lesser ability.

Before the rise of large, democratically elected governments and large limited liability corporations, the pinnacles of wealth and power were commonly inhabited by the same people. Those who held political power were typically from dynasties that already held great wealth, or rapidly assembled it once they captured the throne. Those who owned the biggest banks and businesses also ran them, and thereby commanded great commercial power – taking decisions on whom to employ, what to supply and how to price it which shaped the lives of most ordinary households. Until the early twentieth century, the small size of government (in relation to national income) and the lack of industrial or financial regulation left much power directly in the hands of leading land, bank and factory owners. The subsequent rise of ‘big government’ made political power a potential counterweight to the power of big business – provided it was held and exercised by different people following independent programmes. Problems arise when money is seen to buy power, or power to procure money, rather than both resulting from a common trait – or when the trait that lifts the same individuals to riches and to power is viewed as a vice and not a virtue by those they rule.