Oligarchs contd:Dangers of Plutocracy

The dangers of an oligarchy covered earlier are highlighted in Martin Wolf's FT piece on plutocrats:

Are the vast fortunes being made in emerging economies the result of productive entrepreneurship or of rent-seeking? The answer to this question depends on where the economies are likely to go. The bigger the fortunes made by extracting rent from uncompetitive markets, the greater the resistance to the introduction of fiercer competition and so the weaker competition itself is likely to be. As I learnt in Mexico just over a week ago, knowledgeable observers partly ascribe the country’s weak growth to the lack of robust competition across the economy...Mr Winter(of USA Today) worries that “as the core of the global economy shifts to countries with weak rule of law and institutions, connections to government, rather than entrepreneurial skill, are becoming the quickest and most effective route to wealth.