>>The rule of law might not seem always fair, but it hampers the powerful much more than the weak.

I guess we live in different realities. The powerful have proven over and over that they are capable of subverting the system in their own favor using their resources and influence.

>>As an example: None of the billionaires in my city have set up their own duchy pressed us into an army, enforcing their own laws.

They haven't set up their own duchies with private armies because they haven't had to. The state already protects them. Here is a direct quote from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations:

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”