Looking for hidden mechanisms of power is all well and good, but an excessive focus on equality can also be misleading. In many ways, our contemporary societies are suffering from a clear overproduction of aspiring elites each of whom is "fairly" and "equally" competing for a fixed pie of increasingly tyrannical rule over others, in a way that's detrimental to everyone and precipitates a breakdown in social trust and cohesion.

A 'natural' aristocracy is inherently less dependent on achieving a position of power, so overproduction is inherently mitigated. It's not clear that the privilege conferred by a seemingly "equal" mechanism of strenuous competition is any less objectionable than the overtly unequal privileges of wealth or birth that Jefferson rightly objected to.