Elites: the perennial rulers and their failures

The word elite comes from eligere — “to choose.” Once, it referred to those chosen to lead by virtue of wisdom, courage, or vision. Today, it’s more likely to conjure images of Davos panels, think-tank sinecures, and champagne tweets from first-class lounges.

But the story of the elite isn’t new. It’s the oldest story in politics. From tribal chiefs to emperors, bishops to bankers, every civilisation has had its ruling class. What varies is not their existence, but their quality. Because when elites rot, so do the societies they govern.

They rarely start off corrupt. Most elites begin with some claim to competence or merit. But over time, familiarity breeds contempt — not from the public toward the elite, but from the elite toward the public. They forget whom they serve. They stop listening. And then, as night follows day, they fail.

The mechanisms are depressingly familiar. They gather in the same rooms, attend the same schools, speak the same language — not just linguistically, but morally. A kind of shared myopia sets in: what benefits them is presumed to benefit everyone. Dissent is reframed as ignorance. Criticism becomes incivility. And responsibility, once the price of privilege, becomes optional.

When elites stop paying a price for failure, failure becomes inevitable. Politicians can bankrupt a nation and walk into consultancy roles. CEOs can crater a company and leave with golden parachutes. This is not meritocracy. It’s moral hazard in a tailored suit.

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Thomas Sowell put it plainly: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

That stupidity has a pattern. In ancient Rome, the elite gorged themselves while infrastructure collapsed. In pre-revolutionary France, they ignored famine and called it cake. In the Gilded Age, they built fortunes on the backs of workers they refused to see.

Each time, the result was predictable: unrest, revolt, collapse. Not because the masses were irrational, but because the ruling class had stopped being rational for anyone but themselves.

And yet, the answer is not a fantasy of elite abolition. Societies need leaders. Complexity demands stewardship. The question is not whether we’ll have elites — but what kind we’ll tolerate.

The healthy elite is not the one that claims virtue, but the one that accepts scrutiny. That listens. That fears complacency more than criticism. The best elites are those that see power not as a prize, but as a burden. A duty to be renewed, not assumed.

That means opening doors to different voices, dissenting minds, and inconvenient truths. It means building institutions where failure costs something, where loyalty to the public outranks loyalty to the club.

Because the alternative is always the same: insulated leaders, declining institutions, and a public that — quite rightly — stops listening.

And once the public stops listening, they start looking elsewhere.