It’s like the book “Why Nations Fail”. The elites wind up wrecking things as soon as they can consolidate all the power. They (stupidly) would rather have all

It’s like the book “Why Nations Fail”. The elites wind up wrecking things as soon as they can consolidate all the power. They (stupidly) would rather have all of a small, shrinking pie, rather than sticking with a smaller slice of a much, much larger pie. Even if they themselves would have been better off taking the smaller proportion.