What's natural?

While I tend not to think much of normative naturalism, I do follow the Bacon in that obedience is necessary to command.

In social systems, there seems to be an interesting dichotomy.  An awful lot of machiavellians suggest that power dymanics is inherent in human nature.  An awful lot of other folks suggest that power equalization is the only stable circumstance.  Best citation on that recently is Robin Hanson:

This famous novel suggests that only our “civilized” rules and culture keeps up from the fate of our “savage” ancestors, who were violent dominating rule-less animals.  But though this may be true regarding our distant primate ancestors of six or more million years ago, it is quite unfair slander regarding our face-painting forager ancestors of ten thousand or more years ago.

 Alternatively:

Isolated nomadic forager bands today are “fossils” with crucial clues about our distant ancestors.  Anthropologists who study them report that overt dominance is rare, and long distances make war rare (as 4 million year old fossils suggest). Foragers live in tight quarters and use language to express and enforce social norms on food sharing, non-violence, mating freedom, communal decision making, and norm enforcement.  Anger, bragging, giving orders, and anything remotely resembling dominance among men is punished by avoidance, exile, and death as required.  Human’s unusual hidden female fertility also limits male dominance temptations.

Here's the question...if hatred of inequality is deep in our genes...how much success is it reasonable to expect of systems that rely on massive inequality (autocracies).