It's a self-perpetuating process though, since the productive, skilled workers are by definition spending the majority of their time learning and doing producti

It's a self-perpetuating process though, since the productive, skilled workers are by definition spending the majority of their time learning and doing productive things, while the remainder have the majority of their time freed up to play political games and elect more of their own political kind into leadership roles. That tends to increase the workload of the productive people, further pushing them away from the nexus of decision-making as they're too busy keeping things running. Eventually a crisis occurs in the top-heavy organization (or society, even). The doers burn out or leave, only demanders remain, and everything goes to shit. Perhaps worker-owned companies could help with this, but I'm sure that the time investment imbalance dynamic would still be an issue to contend with.