Wealth no longer directly auctions political influence as it once did

Evidence

Political influence ought not to depend on the wealth of the individual, and, in today’s society, does in fact depend less on this than in the case of its historical predecessors. The opportunity to determine the content of laws is not auctioned to the highest bidder. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 787

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to Lord Darlington’s aristocratic household: his wealth buys access in a pre-modern fashion — the historical predecessor the passage gestures at is precisely Stevens’s world. — connects to: Unchecked market forces produce wealth divergence threatening democracy — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 136