The essay’s core claim: every state is run by elites who control coercion—“rule by the people” is a myth. Following Pareto, “elite” here means skill at organizing power, not virtue. Monarchs inherit violence that worked; democratic politicians excel at voters, coalitions, and using the state against rivals.

It splits economic elites by regime. In a mostly free market they rise by serving customers. Under heavy intervention they rise by partnering with the state—bailouts, monopolies, easy money. 2008 is the exhibit: Citicorp, AIG, JPMorgan, and Fed mortgage-bond buys, plus contractors such as Musk and Thiel, are cast as politically sheltered, not market-proven.

The conclusion: intervention fuses money and politics. Both sides tell stories (mandate of heaven, “will of the people,” “the market loves us”). Real elites, the author says, earn voluntary support in markets, families, and churches; those who rise by force and tax-and-spend are “counterfeit.”

Always and everywhere, political institutions are controlled by elites. It doesn’t matter if the regime type is democratic or monarchical. It doesn’t matter if there is a written constitution or not. All political institutions—and certainly every sovereign state—are run by a group of elites who control the means of coercion.The myth of “rule by the people” is precisely that: a myth. 

But this leaves a big question open: who are the elites? Wilfredo Pareto, that pioneer of Italian elite theory, convincingly suggests that elites are simply those people who are most skilled in their respective fields. Being skilled does not suggest any sort of virtue or beauty, of course, and we cannot assume that any member of the elite will be more moral or refined than any, say, middle-class mechanic. 

In the case of political elites, to be “elite” simply means to be the most effective at organizing and commanding political action. This can be done toward both virtuous ends or evil ends. The political elites excel at the gaining and wielding of political power. Nothing more. In hereditary monarchies, for example, the monarch is a monarch because his ancestors were more effective at using violence—and at stealing and killing—than were their competitors. Their descendants are able to remain in the elite through effective political scheming to maintain their positions. In democracies, those who gain and maintain power are effective at........

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