I don't think it's unavoidable, but centralization will tend to have these sorts of effects without other controls and institutional checks, yes. One could ima

I don't think it's unavoidable, but centralization will tend to have these sorts of effects without other controls and institutional checks, yes. One could imagine a benevolant, meritocratic oligarchy, in which the hiring and promotion process had a strong process of only advancing those up the chain who had demonstrated a certain level of competence, e.g., many successful large engineering organizations.