Random thought I had in church yesterday: Lawyers and their derivatives (Judges, etc.) are the apex people of our society. There is no one more powerful, ultimately, than a lawyer in American society, because these are the people who mediate disputes between two or more equal parties. Without lawyers and a judiciary, democracy couldn’t exist with our current code of laws–people would get frustrated and start killing one another, and society would break down.
At that moment, I made a conceptual leap – lawyers’ preeminence is directly related to our society. That is, I think any capitalist democracy will have many powerful lawyers. I thought through other forms and flavors of government and derived the ‘apex people’ I thought would fall out of them:
Society type
apex individual
Feudalism/Manorialism
Ex: medieval europe
Lord of the manor
Beaurocracy
Government workers
Enlightened Despotism
Ex: Louis XIV France
court syncophants
Fascism
Military
Corrupt Bureaocracy
Mob Bosses
Theocracy
Priests
Pure Democracy
Ex: Ancient Anthens
Demagogues
The one constant in history is human nature. People have a certain set of motivations, drives, and organizational/communicative abilities. Thus, given a certain set of government societal strictures, it seems that a certain type of ‘Apex Person’ will fall out of any society.
There’s a good PoliSci thesis in there somewhere.