Power and Class

 Imagine a little cardboard car, run by a rubber band spinning a plastic fan. Fun. Goes whee.

 Now hook up a full v8 diesel engine to this chassis. This is what it's like to give power to a peasant. Consider the health consequences. Even a single vote is more power than a peasant can handle. Perhaps the peasant can carry the vote-engine, but can't run it at so much as half power, not without ripping his own wheels off.

 Now imagine a fucking tank. It's got a top-mounted machine gun, a coaxial .30 cal, a couple tons of ammo in shells alone...and you're trying to run it with some twisted rubber bands.
 An aristocrat standing up and making himself a cup of coffee has more consequences than a peasant can even imagine. Doing anything at all implies a level of power incomprehensible to the lower classes. Stripped of power, an aristocrat bodily dies, in one way or another.