The elite —erswhile collectors of tribute, land-grant recipients, plantation owners and
the like — may survive long after the initial institutions that spawned them are gone.
Such survival may nevertheless be quite compatible with the maximization of aggregate
surplus provided that the elite are the most efficient of the economic citizenry in the
generations to come. But of course, there is absolutely no reason why this should be the
case. A new generation of enterpreneurs, economic and political, may be waiting to take
over in the wings. It is an open question as to what will happen next, but often, the elite
may well engage in policy that has its goal not economic efficiency but the crippling of
political opposition. Some evidence of this reluctance to let go may be seen in literature
that argues that more unequal societies redistribute less (see Perotti (1994, 1996), and
the survey by B´enabou (1996)).