> Since ancient history the rich have gotten away with doing as they please, and they always will.
That's fundamentally what defines being rich. "Wealth" is just another word for "power", and "rich" just means possessed of substantially more wealth than average.
> The real culprit is democracy's false promise that it can do anything to change this.
Democracy seeks to redistribute some elements of power more equally, and is not completely unsuccessful in so doing in many real world systems. It does something to change the degree to which the rich get away with what they want -- simply by reducing the degree to which they are really rich.
OTOH, its offset often in real democratic politico-economic systems by other elements of the system -- e.g., capitalism -- which have the exact opposite effect.
That's fundamentally what defines being rich. "Wealth" is just another word for "power", and "rich" just means possessed of substantially more wealth than average.
> The real culprit is democracy's false promise that it can do anything to change this.
Democracy seeks to redistribute some elements of power more equally, and is not completely unsuccessful in so doing in many real world systems. It does something to change the degree to which the rich get away with what they want -- simply by reducing the degree to which they are really rich.
OTOH, its offset often in real democratic politico-economic systems by other elements of the system -- e.g., capitalism -- which have the exact opposite effect.