The evolution and aggregation of power is a curious thing.
One can imagine our earliest ancestors - primates, monkeys-ish, ape-ish, power would have belonged to the strongest member of the troop or tribe.
We don't have to imagine too hard, we have plenty of living cousins to examine.
And in the earlier days of our evolution, if you chose to challenge power, you won or you lost. If you won, well, you were now power. And if you lost you were banished from the tribe, or you bowed before it's rules.
Power could never be too abused, if it were then two, three, a dozen members of the tribe together could overthrow it. We figured that out pretty early I'm guessing, shortly into the development of language.
Now power in the troop organized to prevent power from other troops and tribes usurping, The strong united to protect the tribe against the threat of other animals and tribes and troops of monkeys, and so it goes, perhaps for a million years, until we evolved into the first proto-humans.
Intelligence became a part of power, and the powerful could be overthrown by the clever, think of ambushes, weapons, traps, plots...
The clever will always win out over the strong. It's how we are evolving, not bigger, but smarter. This is the proof, this is why.
And so we built weapons, atl-atl's, bows and arrows, slings, and the powerful discovered they could easily be overthrown, and so they befriended the clever, a sort of symbiosis, and together they were the new power. And perhaps now it took a hundred ape-men to overthrow power...
Power is now concentrated in the hands of kings, warlords, and it came to be represented through the abstraction of money - gold, gems, those rare and coveted items, to own these things symbolized power, not only in the ownership, but in the resources required to protect these things from others interested in them. Power is transferred to objects, the objects, status symbols that exhibit the power of the owner. We now have the birth of Status Symbols, an entire subculture that fetishizes the accouterments of power, it began with the possession of rare and precious things, then became the ability to buy the labors and skills of others (think of the clothing worn in the 16th, 17th centuries, even now), it has evolved since them to reflect itself in things like luxury handbags, ostentatious housing and expensive cars, all designed to display to potential mates and rivals the "power" of the owner.
In times of revolution, when the abuses of power have become so intolerable, it's wielder could be overthrown and the wealth - gold, money, gems - redistributed amongst the populace.
Kings grow ever more powerful. There are other contenders for power as well, there is now religion, which aggregates power beyond state borders and country lines, it allies itself with some states, alienates others, and exempts itself from the the local laws and taxation. In return it grants "legitimacy" to Kings beyond what is theirs through force or inheritance - The Divine Right of Kings. And while religions (thinking especially of Catholicism and Christianity) advertise and promote charity and missions for the unfortunate and unsaved, a surprising amount of wealth and power seem to stick with them - think of the Vatican and the Pope.
This sets the precedence for what will become the new religion: Corporations.
The aggregation of power has resulted now in Nations, where no longer can a single citizen, or hundreds, or thousands even, hope to overthrow the state, it take the will of other nations, or the combined will of an entire populace to stage a revolution.
Until now, money, wealth, merely coagulated in banks, debts were written against the concrete security of vaulted gold, gems and other valuables. But a couple of curious fictions take place. The first, banks begin to print and lend money against what they have in "reserve". As time continues this practice grows unchecked until - as of this moment - there is at least 100 times more money in circulation than there exist in reserves. The explanation of this is rather long and convoluted, but check the facts, please, don't take my word for it.
The second fiction is that of the corporation, that a group of people can unite to form a fictitious "person" whose sole interest lies in making money.
From the combination of these two fictions we see the rise of corporate Juggernauts, whose wealth outstrips that of nations and moves fluidly between countries, hidden bank accounts, and quiet stockholders and CEO's, fictional personas that yet can actively lobby, write and even enforce laws to their own end. We write mythologies of their deeds and adventures, write of their adherents, disciples, their chosen priests, we immortalize them in film and devote countless pages in books and newspapers to their exploits. They represent the final consolidation of power, Gods, imaginary beings in control of vast quantities of imaginary wealth, yet with real world impacts and consequence. They - the corporations - are the final aggregation of power, devouring one another, spawning children, and when finally we defeat them all their inflated buffoonery, wealth and power will vanish into a sea of bits and bytes, illusory, fleeting, forever lost, and we will wonder that ever we believed in them at all...