The great kings of old were leading their soldiers in the battle. And the rank of the nobility was derived from the bravery in war.
But we live in the times of moneybags:
Rainer Maria Rilke
from Book of Hours
The kings of the world are grown old,
inheritors they shall have none.
In childhood death removes the son,
their daughters pale have given, each one,
sick crowns to the powers to hold.
Into coin the rabble breaks them,
today's lord of the world takes them,
stretches them into machines in his fire,
grumbling they serve his every desire;
but happiness still forsakes them.
The ore is homesick. And it yearns
to leave the coin and leave the wheel
that teach it to lead a life inane.
The factories and tills it spurns;
from petty forms it will uncongeal,
return to the open mountain's vein,
and on it the mountain will close again.
(Translated by Albert Hofstadter as part of Heidegger's What Are Poets For?)
A dichotomy Lester Thurow once created is very useful.
An establishment vs an oligarchy.
An establishment is like the Founding Fathers. They are powerful and wealthy but with a strong sense of public spirit and civic virtue. They believe in duty and consider the well being of the country as their own well being.
An oligarchy is like a definition I once heard of "upper crust". A bunch of crumbs held together by dough. They are like Brezhnev's nomenklatura and Yeltsin's oligarchs and the Mexican ruling elite and the boards of Enron and Tyco and Global Crossing. The country is just something to be milked for their own benefit. They are parasites who build nothing. Its wealth is something to be drained into Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts. They are devoid of any conception of duty or responsibility.
A distinction he didn't make is that the sons of an establishment will do their duty in time of war. The sons of Prescott Bush and Joseph Kennedy were in high casualty front line positions. There is nothing safe about being a carrier pilot or a PT boat commander. But as we move away from WW2 the sons of the powerful are further and further away from harms way. The sons of an oligarchy will save their own butts and leave the dying to others. When things go south they will, like Arab officers, abandon their men and hightail it out of there.