As a group expands in size, don’t the opportunities for an individual to amass wealth, and then translate that to power, also increase significantly?
In any system where wealth converts to power, it does because the majority of people implicitly agree with playing the game that way.
In a practical egalitarian society, if the person with all the furs decided one day to not share, then the people would stop sharing their food, tools, building skills, childcare, medicinal treatments, fire, feasts, etc. with this person. They wouldn't have any choice but to rejoin society or try to go truly independent.
Somehow, they have to first be convinced that the wealthy has some sort of moral right to their possessions. In other words, they have to play along in the game of wealth distribution.
...unless you have convinced them of your moral right to those furs. That's literally the only way a large group of people can be "unable" to expropriate them.
Each individual bodyguard has no reason to think they would have a higher rank after a coup replacing the "one person."
They absolutely don't need to believe that the person at the top is irreplaceable. Sometimes they've lived through a replacement or two!
I'm talking about an egalitarian society where one person suddenly tries to convince a band of friends that it's in their interest to close themselves off from the rest of society and try to extract value from it without contributing back.
There's no "rank" to be gained from refusing to join that band -- quite the opposite! You get to go back to a society that's free from rank.
^ At best they get to split the furs up among 40 people instead of 41.
(And if the 1 removed is actually doing any work, there's also more work to assign.)
There's little reason for any individual goon to think they're going to get a better deal this way. Let alone enough to compensate for the risk.
Removing the guy who takes "the lion's share" produces someone new to take the lion's share.
Unless they think they can do away with that entire structure. But then they have to believe they can change everyone's behavior all at once from collectively enforcing inequality to collectively enforcing equality.
The kind of social structure that makes this possible is the kind of social structure that the powerful person will make sure can't arise (by controlling information, removing potential leaders, etc.)
You seem to be approaching the question "in a hierarchical society, what makes it impossible for small bands of people to overpower the entire system all at once?" which is an interesting question, but a very different one.
I'm just saying that underling guards in general don't actually need to believe in the narrative the guarded elite uses as self-justification. Maybe they do believe it, maybe they feel obligated to pretend to believe, maybe it's all naked self-interest... regardless, what really keeps them in their position is the grid of power/interest.
They would need to organize themselves collectively somehow.
> Somehow, they have to first be convinced that the wealthy has some sort of moral right to their possessions.
No, they just need to be convinced that they don't have any collective organization.
Slaves don't need to be convinced of the morality of their situation, just the hopelessness on it.
"all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed"
In order to even have a concept of "owning wealth" there must be a physical defense of wealth already set up.
It's "inherent" in that sense. Owning the thing means having some means of physical militaristic defense of the thing.
The underlying fact you're referencing here is simply that the means of defense is never an individual's physical power.
What it is instead, is their position in a social graph of interests. Other people in the society have their own lives structured so that it's in their interests to serve and protect power.
However, ownership exists in egalitarian forms of organisation too. It's not the "exclusive right to prevent others from using the thing", but in any human arrangement people understand that some objects are needed by some people (crutch, broken leg), some objects are more actively used by some people (household hatchet, cutting wood every week), and some objects have sentimental value for some people (grandma's ashes.)
These things normally count as property, with no violence to enforce it.
Yes and no. Human societies in general have concepts of personal property (i.e. something you use, like your toothbrush).
Not all societies have concepts of private property that we have today i.e. something you never use but still control. This is a complex set of viewpoints with many conflicts. They changed a lot over time. Many are very modern.
E.g. you can become owner of land by adverse possession.
In many egalitarian societies a person hoarding excessive amounts of objects is seen as unhinged.