I don't know about this. There are too many examples of people who exerted influence due to reasons other than having money: for example, coming from an old fam

I don't know about this. There are too many examples of people who exerted influence due to reasons other than having money: for example, coming from an old family has meant a lot throughout most of history, and while accumulated wealth is a common side effect of that, a king is not typically made a king because they have the most money in the bank, instead because of what I guess Hanson would call the "prestige" of coming from a particular bloodline. The aristocracy in many places and times in history have been influential while being cash poor, at least compared to those filthy parvenus in the merchant and banking classes. In terms of soft power influence, I think it's easy to mix up cause and effect. Is Jeff Bezos one of the most influential people in the world? Yes. Is he one of the richest people in the world? Yes. But, is he influential because he's rich, or rich as a side effect of the influential company he started? I'd argue the latter. There have also been too many changes to what we call wealth to consider it the single constant in the history of power: would money today even be recognizable as a concept to someone from 3000 BC? The same goes with what we call influence: Martin Luther was one of the most influential people in history, and wealth was not a factor in that.