One downside/benefit of living in a global extremistan (Taleb's term for an unpredictable system that generates extreme outcomes) is that it makes the rise of superempowered individuals inevitable. Here's some fun thinking on the topic.
One source superempowerment will be from winner take all economics and parasitic predation (see below for more on this term). The top 0.01% of income earners will see have already seen their wealth accelerate faster than ever before (particularly now that their downside risk is backstopped by the coffers of morally weak nation-states).
Another driver of superempowerment stems from an ability to use systems disruption to cause economic damage. Individuals that manage open source guerrilla networks -- connectors/networks/coaches -- have the ability generate economic damage at least as large (if not larger) as the most elite of income earners. For example, the anti-entrepreneur 'Jomo Gbomo' manages the Nigerian guerrilla network MEND. This network disrupts oil production by BP Shell, Chevron, and AGIP as a means to coerce the corrupt regime in Lagos into good governance. 'Jomo' been able to generate damage worth nearly 2x Bill Gates has generated in income.
However, superempowerment isn't limited to the top .01% outliers. There's a large follow on group that is rapidly gaining the needed leverage (via network connectivity, tech improvements, etc.) to become superempowered. How large is this group? If we look at by income , that group may be as large as the top 10% who have seen rapid income growth over the last 30 years. In terms of anti-entrepreneurs, the growth has been slower but still widespread, despite an ability to generate systemic damage many orders of magnitude higher than that same individual's life-time earnings potential in the "legal"economy. There's also cross-overs, like those that start in the "legal" group but instead cause damage due to incompetence/greed/etc. (for example, rogue traders at investment banks that sought millions in income but instead generated billions in losses).
NOTE: On parasitic predation in an economy. The growing inability of nation-states to regulate/control global system operation (made inevitable by how the global economic platform was built) has enabled parasites to emerge that can gain control of core processes. In a fashion similar to how parasites, cancer, etc. co-opt system function in biology, these parasites latch onto the central "bow-tie" of the global economy, which then allows them to repurpose the economy's functionality to achieve selfish (in the genetic sense) goals. For example, we recently saw many instances of this last fall when the financial system nearly collapsed.