Centrifuge

It could be read into the history of late Roman decline that there was a centrifugal process of delamination, in which the body politic split into multiple hostile factions, each successively deploying an accumulation of military elements to violently seize power and hold the center, which continued on in waves as the body politic thinned and weakened. The ambitious looked to embody the ruler, and so each faction moved forth to temporarily hold that embodiment. 

Today, we can look at the gaudy opulence of demagogues and dictators and see reflected in them a desire to mimic the wealthy. Yes they are looking to impose a sort of order in an increasingly unstable regime,  but also simultaneously they are looking to lord over the collective proceeds of a thinning and disintegrating society and live with opulence and extravagance, mimicking their "betters," as their betters did with each successive generation of topping the others' wealth.