> Of course people with power are going to concentrate it and nudge things to ever greater heights in their favor. To attempt to stop it you need other people w

> Of course people with power are going to concentrate it and nudge things to ever greater heights in their favor. To attempt to stop it you need other people with power to do something... This is true. However you got the following conclusion wrong. People with power will continue to concentrate it. The solution isn't to prevent people from gaining power (or wealth) - the solution is it have an opposite force always pushing to distribute power again. So in relative terms people with good ideas, or financial success can gain wealth or power relative to their peers as a reward for success, but the overall system must ensure that on absolute terms that power or success doesn't continuously consolidate and become to heavy. That is why antitrust, term limits, and yes progressive taxation are some of the most important things a society can do. Checks against power consolidation are the only ways to keep a society functioning with any sort of efficiency. It's the old school mario cart approach. Yes someone can win the race, but the system also says the further ahead you get, the more headwinds you face and the further behind you are, the more likely you get a tail wind. It's the same reason why sports leagues have hard salary caps and specifically draft picks are distributed in reverse order of success/performance. It's the only way to get actual competition. The same holds in business and society in general. Otherwise you end up with a monopoly or oligopoly stamping out competition. The only form of free-market competition is enforced free-market competition.