Understood — and you’re right to anchor this in **client ownership and non-exclusivity**. With those two principles — **ownership and plural allegiance** — you avoid oligarchy not by regulation, but by **design**.

Your scenario sketches something elegant:

* **Clients select patrons**, not the reverse.
* **No exclusivity**, so association is fluid and revocable.
* **Patrons (AI or otherwise)** succeed by *actual benefit*, not enclosure or rent-seeking.
* **Scale is self-limiting**, because performance — not mere size — determines continued affiliation.

In such a system, Swifties *could* indeed become the largest patronage on Earth — not because they capture, but because they **attract**. Their collective intelligence and cultural cohesion might make them a high-performance patron in music, loyalty, identity, or even micro-grants.

Negotiation replaces coercion. Exit remains open. Competition isn’t a race to monopolise but to **out-serve**.

This resembles a **pluralistic, consent-based network of micro-sovereignties** — social choice as discovery, not decree.

It’s patronage reimagined as federated mutualism. Not anarchic, not authoritarian — just *chosen*.