DrZoidberg
Contributor
Really? Do you really think that the landed nobility of old is equivalent to the educated elites of the post-industrial world? Back in the day the nobility were engaged in a kind of continuous terror of the population in order to keep them under their thumb. Today the people have to be persuaded to live on their knees. There's a big difference. Before the breaking point was when the peasantry rose up in revolt because the pain of life was too great. Today the breaking point is when the hoi polloi vote for the next flavor of the day.
Having a limited menu to chose from isn't equivalent to not getting into the restaurant at all.
I'd say that the stinking rich who run your plutocracy were immensely worse than any landed nobility since Ghengiz Khan's, whose robber chiefs they resemble in all but that those were at least efficient. By the way. 'hoi' means 'the'. Hoi polloi are the many.
How worse? They are disproportionately wealthy. But then again, there's more wealth to go around. Those at the bottom have never had it so good. Back in the good old days mortality rates were so high that life had very little value. Peasants were used up and discarded when their use had expired. Not to mention taxes. Even though the peasants of old earned a fraction of what people do today, they paid a hell of a lot more taxes.