I'm not a big fan of aristocracy, but if you like it, then you can rejoice because I think the world is reinventing it through academia and politics. I think it was a naive to think an anthropological constant throughout all historical times could just vanish in a few centuries.
Basically, at the top of society there will always be a minority of people who will claim a legitimate right to steal from all the others.
Ya its the stealing that is the problem. In feudalism the aristocratic families they control the land that has development permission, and they own all the licenses, permits, quotas, royal allotments, etc.. in each area of the economy. And then the state it sets those quotas below the level of demand in the society, in order that they get monopolist profits on them.
Its like I don't care if a rich guy has a business selling salt in an area. Where my problem is, is when no one else is allowed to sell salt in the area, and the state enforces that. And then not surprisingly the rich guy with the salt license makes a fortune with no effort. With the modern state and the vast numbers of people it employs directly and indirectly they are re-establishing a version of feudalism. But this time it is exceptionally well paying state jobs that there is no way you can get if you aren't one of the insiders. And there is no downside risk, like they can't lose the jobs. And the benefits, pension, vacations for conferences, etc.. are huge when you add them all up, like the university professors. Of course the state demands complete loyalty if it is paying all that.
What happens in societies is the people at the top however they got there, they want to entrench their families positions through the coming generations and centuries. But this cannot be done in a free market as it is too chaotic. They cannot guarantee that their children will be able to run the businesses and compete, or that their children won't be surpassed by the best capitalists of the next generation. Or even that their children won't make bad investment decisions and blow the money.
So they use the law and the state to entrench their positions. But this creates a big problem as seen in France - if they are using the force of the state to steal from people. Then the people only have one way to stop this and ambitious men have only one way to live in the palaces - through violent revolution.
In France the poor young people and immigrants they just want opportunity imo. But France it won't allow that with all the licenses, permits, quotas etc. So what do they do - well they have to turn to violence then. Something rulers forget is in a world of violence the people don't just stay good citizens engaging only in voluntary trade. The people quickly learn that if violence is the only path to success to use violence all the time. And the people organize together.
So feudalism it is constant warfare as people fight to see who gets the state power and to live in the palaces. That is what is going on imo in Ukraine too, if there is one group who lives in the palaces and everybody else all their wealth they make gets stolen, then the name of the game is to fight it out to become the men in the palaces. And even when the next group wins, and they steal from everybody then they become the targets.
And worse than that the people soon figure out that if all their wealth gets stolen if they create it.. why create it in the first place, so people just do the minimum to get by. Which is why most of the world is so poor.
To finance this new aristocracy that countries are building that you mentioned they need to have higher and higher taxes.
