Gatekeeping effectively boils down to using a heuristic to make a decision (good or bad). Once a heuristic is known, people who want $thing will optimize for $

Gatekeeping effectively boils down to using a heuristic to make a decision (good or bad). Once a heuristic is known, people who want $thing will optimize for $arbitrary_heuristic. Those with more resources will use them to optimize better. Toss in natural human network effects (eg, giving a friend advice), and those with resources will tend to dominate. You need active countervailing forces to avoid that natural tendency.