Contraption Theory

(especially because I know that already in the 1980s audiences would yell out "too late" when they sang that line)

compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg#%22Don't_trust_a...

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It makes perfect sense that a Caesar wouldn't trust anyone who seemed to be "sleeping on sticks and tasting gall" (臥薪嚐膽); armed rebellions are expensive, and someone who (by stock and flow analysis) clearly can't build up a war chest or hire spies or corrupt your guys can be trusted to the extent that they won't do much harm whenever they ultimately betray that trust.

In very early feudal days, a king would wander around his kingdom with his retinue, using up each vassal's surplus in high living, and then moving on to the next.

Louis XIV is credited with flipping that script: by running an extravagant court, he made sure that (even if his vassals themselves had to return to their own properties to administer them from time to time) their wives and children were close to the court, and a good portion of the revenue from their properties was flowing towards Versailles to support the court life to which they all had become accustomed.

In Victorian days (in addition to commissions having been bought, not awarded) the posher cavalry units also used to apply a variation on this principle: setting unit mess dues higher than the army salary effectively kept the riff-raff out.

In our days I've heard a VP Sales explicitly say he likes his top producers to have expensive hobbies, because it keeps them hungry (and working for him; they might get poached by an established rival, but they're highly unlikely to go to a startup and work for relative peanuts).