And here I sit, thinking those rules were so that the 1% could take all the value the 99% produced.

Heh. The 1% are mostly the very successful predators and their heirs.

They buy/make a lot of rules, but there's still (currently) a ton more to constrain predation.

(The more money you have, of course, the easier it is to game a more complex system...)

Nuclear weapons made this a bigger issue since it closes the option of last resort, which is war. See North Korea…

Not sure what you mean. After what was done to Libya after they gave up nukes, North Korea learned it can't disarm without subsequently being invaded and destroyed.

Most? That's an understatement.

The rules that aren't are so few they may as well be rounding errors lost in noise.

There's a line describing this in a failed US version of the cop drama Prime Suspect... I forget the exact wording but it's some grizzled cop talking about how their job is to protect the herd from the carnivorous sheep in it.

most are about 10% of predators trying to devour the other 10% of predators while preventing being devoured by the 80% of normal people