It's called Guillotine Insurance. The world is your Oyster, just don't hose it up for everyone else. The greater the proportion of "everyone else" you hose it

It's called Guillotine Insurance. The world is your Oyster, just don't hose it up for everyone else. The greater the proportion of "everyone else" you hose it up for, the greater the chance someone will take exception and act on it. Noblesse oblige is an emergent phenomena, and parallels "consent of the governed" but in a more economics/moralistic sense. Basically, it's how those who have accrued vast fortune, and held onto it, have managed not to end up one more corpse on the bloody murder pile. No one will bat an eye at another dead aristocrat or power vacuum. Be a virtuous soul actually utilizing power and wealth to lift those around you and increase their standards of living? That can get you protection. Not sure where you're getting the journalist/activist angle from. It's much more general than that. The press/media is just one channel for info propagation in the populace. When you get big enough to become a casual Nexus point for large swatches of the public, it behooves you to keep your nose clean. The court of public opinion's justice is far less metered than that of the court of Law's.