Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
but the empty space between them
is the essence of the wheel.

in our world, every trade is but a spoke - manufacture, engineering, police, courts, traffic cops, farmers, doctors ... they all feed into the centre, which, ideally should re-route as needed, except the centre has found that it need not.
as alvin toffler said, the integrators reap the cream of the world, as so the central hub - the politicians, the industry owners (it IS a world driven by manufacturing ) eat all the produce of the spokes and pass on only sustenance level produce.
hence the drive to be as near the king's feet as possible