I think the big difference between the "bitcoin elites" and the existing financial system elites is the "bitcoin elites" are working really hard to distribute our power.
We're getting there, but it will take time. I really hope in a year or two there will be at least three or four different bitcoin implementations all producing blocks, validating transactions, etc. And in ten years there will be a dozen or more.
That is a natural progression; I was around when NCSA Mosaic was the one web browser and the NCSA server was the only web server, and there have been a couple cycles of certain browsers / web servers becoming dominant and then fading. I expect to see a similar evolution for Bitcoin infrastructure software.