Am I being a hopeless romantic to imagine that barons of days yore used to actually think owning the capital and employing the labor with which they went about

Am I being a hopeless romantic to imagine that barons of days yore used to actually think owning the capital and employing the labor with which they went about their business made them powerful? Who is holding who hostage? Not everyone is an SV technoweenie too young to remember when the dot-com crash was a thing.