We allow individuals to amass that much power because people look to the folks around them to see what products they should use.<p>Concentration of power is an emergent property of network effects.  As long as &quot;being popular&quot; is positively correlated with your decision to use a product, then the products that are already popular will get more popular, and their owners will get rich.  It&#x27;s largely (but not entirely) random <i>who</i> the owners are, but their existence is guaranteed.<p>If everybody thought for themselves and made their decisions independently of what everyone else does, you&#x27;d see a much more egalitarian distribution of wealth.  But unfortunately most people lack the courage (or maybe just time &amp; energy) to make up their own minds, and outsource their opinions to others.  Ironically, many of the very rich are the biggest critics of this phenomena - indeed, the reason they got rich was because they had the ability to think for themselves and see what other people didn&#x27;t see.<p>The same applies to political power (people would rather vote for a Clinton or Bush than an unknown candidate just because they have the brand name recognition) and to fame (Paris Hilton got to be famous because people talk about her.  Why do they talk about her?  Because their friends talk about her.)