14 ms·

How the British aristocracy preserved their power

106 points by BrandiATMuhkuh 9y ago

fiokoden 9y ago
Nuclear weapons? Hydrogen bombs? Intercontinental ballistic missiles? Bluster and belligerence? Oh hang on, wrong countries aristocracy preserving power.
billphipps 9y ago
The grauniad are just a bunch of tabla drumming lentil eating sandal wearing hippies
- coldtea 9y ago
  Still better -- and more current -- than aristocracy-ass kissing 19th century peasants...
- barryhoodlum 9y ago
  The Guardian isn't left wing. It's centrist.
  - mintone 9y ago
    > The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion.[3][4] The newspaper's reputation as a platform for liberal and left-wing editorial has led to the use of the "Guardian reader" and "Guardianista" as often (but not always) pejorative epithets for those of left-leaning or politically correct tendencies.[5][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian
    - etplayer 9y ago
      The paper is at best center-left; you'll find no support for any Socialist parties, and they even make fun of Corbyn's labour from time to time. Being liberal doesn't mean 'left', either. The paper always (to my knowledge) runs "PC" articles and especially opinion pieces, but that's not restricted to left-wing sources. It's probably best put by the first sentence: the mainstream left of British political opinion - which turns out to be almost wholly center-left, even Corbyn is a social democrat.
      - UncleSlacky 9y ago
        Indeed, they're still fairly anti-Corbyn (they think a woman should have got the job, no matter how neoliberal she might be), pro-Macron, and they were ridiculously anti-Sanders/pro-Hillary all last year (and still are when the subject comes up).
    - barryhoodlum 9y ago
      I live in the UK and know what the Guardian is. It is not a "hippy's" newspaper. Thanks for the condescending Wikipedia link though.
      - 2017Dude 9y ago
        I live in UK. The Guardian is as left as it gets unless there are some underground communist papers I don't know about.
        pmyteh 9y ago
        If you're looking for a daily paper well to the left of The Guardian, can I interest you in the Morning Star? Available from your local newsagent, owned by a co-operative closely linked to the Communist Party of Great Britain. No need to go underground! More seriously, The Guardian is a (social) liberal newspaper. It's politics are generally those of the 1980s Social Democratic Party, not the left of the Labour party. It's biases are metropolitan, if anything. That there is no quality paper to their left is mainly because the British newspaper market is already crowded so it's commercially difficult. It doesn't mean that The Guardian can be reasonably labelled as extreme.
        casiotone 9y ago
        The Mirror could be described as further left than the Guardian lately. The past few years especially has seen a shift in the Guardian's position well to the right to the point where even calling it centrist is probably not correct. This is likely a consequence of falling sales and reliance on advertisers - you'll see a large number of sponsored articles on it these days for example.
        urbanj 9y ago
        Not very politically aware then.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - Boothroid 9y ago
    From my observations it's all over the place, with a consistent anti-male theme across several decades whilst still greatly favouring male sports in its sports pages, a consistent feminist theme about the evils of patriarchy and the male gaze etc. whilst still including a significant amount of fashion coverage and carrying advertising for the fashion/cosmetics industry, and a consistent anti-capitalist/globalism theme from some commentators whilst still remaining fervently pro-EU and recently anti-Brexit. It's difficult to take it seriously when it seems so utterly compromised. At least you know where you stand with the bastards at the Telegraph. My personal opinion on the Guardian is that its main function seems to be alleviating the guilt of successful lefties/saving them the hard work of having to form their own opinions.
- sctb 9y ago
  Please post civilly and substantively here or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - billphipps 9y ago
    ok
pjc50 9y ago
TLDR: property ownership, including leasehold; tax avoidance, such as through trusts; and the House of Lords. There are a lot fewer aristocracy than there were at the start of the 20th century, but those that remain are extremely wealthy.
cmdkeen 9y ago
Chris Bryant is of course a Labour MP. Intriguingly he was also caught up in the expenses scandal. One does wonder whether his book (which is being serialised here) manages to wonder about how the occupants of "the other place" get and hold onto power. It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege. We're starting to see a similar concept return in the form of billionaires being criticised if they fail to sign up to donate their money.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege. Yeah, so noble of them...
- gadders 9y ago
  Not the only scandal he's been involved in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bryant#Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bryant#Media
- MarchHare 9y ago
  >avoiding taxes, perfectly legally Given the undemocratic and privileged positions many enjoy in the house of lords, some could say the legality of their methods is nothing more than corruption.
Sacho 9y ago
tl;dr: they're good businessmen and do their best to preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents. The article spends too long telling irrelevant stories to make its few points: - owning land is a great way to get rich - the rich evade taxes by restructuring their business - investing in business keeps your family's wealth intact - networking from elite clubs helps you find opportunities to invest in None of these points are specific to aristocrats. We all strive towards these goals - my family started out living in a rented apartment, and their first milestone was buying their own house. They wanted their kids to go to an elite university so we could get good networking opportunities. Investing in business is just a truism - past a certain point of wealth, it's no longer worth it to sell your time for money, compared to investing. The writer also spends some time carefully conflating the aristocracy of old with the modern aristocrats, in a weird non-sequitur parallel. People of old did something bad, therefore...what, exactly? This is bigotry and prejudice, but we hate rich people, so it's okay. As a whole this reminds me of Varys's riddle from Game of Thrones - if you are so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power?
- pjc50 9y ago
  > carefully conflating the aristocracy of old with the modern aristocrats > preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving out subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing to do with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance? Note that owning land is a great zero sum way to get rich. If the Duke of Westminster owns half of London, and isn't interested in selling it, you can't invest there. > if you are so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power Please explain how the people are incensed are also "giving them power" in any meaningful sense?
  - Sacho 9y ago
    > There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving out subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing to do with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance? Because it wasn't your father, it was your...how many generations are there between us and the middle ages, again? This is a time jump in the article itself: > Historically, the British aristocracy’s defining feature was not a noble aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self-advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency. > ..... > And when democracy finally and rudely shunted them aside, they found new means of preserving their extravagant riches without the tedium of pretending they sought the common interest. Far from dying away, they remain very much alive. Moreover, the UK has been a democracy for quite some time now, and has had ample time to address inheritance law, and land ownership law. Like the article states: > That is no accident. British laws on land tenure, inheritance tax, corporate governance and discretionary trusts still make it easy to hide wealth from public view. Land is subsidised, and taxed more lightly than residential property. Unearned income bears less of a burden than earned income. The article claims that this is the secret to the power of the aristocracy. This power is given to them by laws, designed and voted in by MPs, who are in turn voted in by the people.
keenerd 9y ago
> The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the Lowlands. This is balanced by their Right to Roam. For those in the US, this will sound completely insane: there is no concept of trespassing provided you act responsibly when on other's land. Access to the country is a common right, and the owners are stewards to it. ~~Arguably, the most practical way for such a law to come into existence is for the bulk of the land to be owned by a tiny minority, and for a democratic majority to create the law.~~ Strike that, didn't research. Sorry.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Edit: thankyou for amending your comment about this being a good way to achieve right to roam. It's a rare thing from anyone on the internet to admit any kind of inaccuracy. This view ignores all the history and has it exactly backwards. A full description would require at least one book, although I'd suggest starting with http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers A few things which must be taken into account: - pre-feudal common ownership - confiscation of land during the 1700s Jacobite rebellions. "More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families" is not at all surprising when you consider that those families were given the land from its original owners and occupants at gunpoint by the government. - the Highland Clearances In short, the right to roam pre-existed; it was only removed by extremely questionable action; and the minority who owned the land fought access to it. (For the situation in England&Wales, start at the Kinder Scout mass trespass)
  - onetimeusename 9y ago
    The Jacobites were themselves aristocrats and were violently rebelling against the monarchy. Also, the Highland Clearances were not acts of theft, the landowners already owned the land at that point. edit: I should also state that the Highland Clearances were complex but get retold as: "rich people stole land from poor people" often.
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Read the article, and unless I missed it, they didn't mention the real reason: Primogeniture, or one person keeps it all. So you have 100,000 acres from the 15th century and the oldest son gets to it all, intact. If it was split over the centuries, they'd have next to nothing. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-manor-born-the-female-aristocrats-battling-to-inherit-the-title-8656310.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-ma... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of-westminster-hugh-grosvenor-inherit-fortune https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of-...
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  bring back Gavelkind?
  - tryingagainbro 9y ago
    Why? I see nothing wrong with the this system, the original owner and the state agree to it. Probably UK is better since a huge estate can make /generate much more income /employment than a 1000 plots of 1.2 acres each. They have power because they have money. A window washer that is the second cousin of Queen Elizabeth and with a nobility title is just a window washer, barely making ends meet. Now Queen Elizabeth's second cousin with 50,000 acres, a nobility title and two castles is a different thing :)
- zokier 9y ago
  This is actually something that I have sort of encountered/pondered in my own life; while my family has never been wealthy by any degree, they have held a bit of land. But in just couple generations the original "estate" has been splintered into huge amount of small pieces, especially with the bigger family sizes of past. Such small pieces are not really that valuable, and can get "lost" (sold more or less voluntarily, or reach a dead end in family tree) more easily. My father has been trying to counteract this arguably destructive force by offering to buy some lands to keep them in the family, but of course his resources are limited and not everyone sees the splintering or the damage caused by it the same way.
- 9y ago
dalbasal 9y ago
I think the short (or maybe trite) answer is land. The aristocratic "investment thesis" held true in the long term. The UK hasn't had land reform since the civil wars, so big landholdings didn't changed much except in Ireland. To pick a sentence amlost at random: "More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families." Today the dominant economic institution is companies. You could make statements like the one above and replace one with the other. Besides that, it's largely similar. The moral mythology is completely different, but the politics and economics largely hold true. Tryagainbro brings up primogeniture, which is important. Companies have that built in.
eternalban 9y ago
They incorporated select technocratic subsets of the society into the ruling class (the embryonic "deep state"), engineered the 'personhood' of the corporation, and have errected the global framework (currently incubating until the demise of the "Last Empire") that will insure the continuity of their lording it over the rest of us.
Aloha 9y ago
This article presents the idea that aristocracy on whole in Britain is as powerful as it ever was - which is a fallacy - the aristocracy was devastated by the death of an entire generation of its best and brightest in World War I, it was bled deeply by taxes between 1918 and 1980, it was stripped largely of its political power (reduction of hereditary peers, removal of the veto power of the House of Lords, removal of the House of Lords as a court of appeal) - those who survived (with wealth) have survived because of either the specific assets they owned - or because of good business savvy, or a combination of both. Consider that a majority of the peerage didn't come out still owning estates - most of them fell out into the middle class and 'work for a living' - even those with great wealth, now mostly act as businessmen rather than merely shepherds of that wealth.
- gwern 9y ago
  Overall, this article is a tissue of misleading statistics, anecdotes, and lack of context. The largest figure mentioned is 4 billion pounds; which is about as much as you might earn by selling an odd video game about crude blocks to Microsoft. Wow, so impress, much 'preservation of power'. The House of Lords rhetoric is also odd - how do anecdotes about a largely inactive house they've been mostly expelled out of show that they "preserved their power"? Or take this one: > The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the Lowlands. 'private individuals and companies' != 'aristocracy', by any means. You could say something very similar about the USA, which has not had an aristocracy in 200+ years - because all countries have considerable wealth inequality. And, uh, what exactly are we supposed to take away from dicing Scottish landholdings into "estates of more than 5,000 acres"? Perhaps we are supposed to be astonished by the fact that rich people buy London real estate and "rent" it out? Or perhaps we are supposed to be impressed by > According to the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List, 30 peers are each worth £100m or more. So in other words, they're collectively worth about as much as Magic Leap or Slack? Truly impressive, I see now that England is ruled as much as ever by the aristocracy, it is merely hidden better. Hang the bastards!
  - 9y ago
throw2016 9y ago
These are sophisticated power and wealth structures that are adept at keeping and growing their wealth and power intact over tens of generations. The more wealth you have the more potential impact you have whatever the system, and feudal power structures like the UK which were never broken unlike say China and Russia with land reform have strong historical and real world ties to power. Beneficiaries will obviously justify or diminish its impact, and those not doing well in the current system will direct their anger and frustration here. Land is the source of wealth and power and is finite. These are generational conflicts as societies figure out the best way to manage their assets and resources. The aristocracy is simply self interested like all of us in doing their best to retain what they have accumulated. Capitalism has not solved or addressed inheritance, its a nod nod wink wink kind of thing, and claims of equality and the level playing field while loudly made do not hold up the slightest in the real world we live in.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  In Germany nobility is not as much in the public eye as in Britain but when you read the news I am always surprised how many of them are still there with enormous wealth.
  - lvkleist 9y ago
    Only the ones in the west. Most of the Prussian aristocrats who owned land in what became western Poland or the German Democratic Republic were disowned and fled/were killed.
zeveb 9y ago
> Historically, the British aristocracy’s defining feature was not a noble aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self-advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency. They grasped wealth, corruptly carved out their niche at the pinnacle of society and held on to it with a vice-like grip. They endlessly reinforced their own status and enforced deference on others through ostentatiously exorbitant expenditure on palaces, clothing and jewellery. They laid down a strict set of rules for the rest of society, but lived by a different standard. That sounds like a very good description of the Bolsheviks the Guardian supported so fervently.
lurcio 9y ago
As for the 'British' Crown, if my memory serves me right the Domesday book records that William the Conq. did a 50/40/10 land split with the Church and his nobles. (To this day a significant percentage of land is not even recorded in the land registry. We might assume this is held in perpetuity without falling under inheritance laws. Everyone else is to this day a tenant on the land). It would have been more than prodigal to lose when the system is in your hands... Daniel 4 is interesting in this regard: "This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men." Bless them!
- pmyteh 9y ago
  That land is not registered in the Land Registry doesn't necessarily mean that it's held in some kind of perpetual corporation. Compulsory registration on sale was phased in after 1925 and, IIRC, you weren't obliged to register land if it passed by inheritance or gift until very recently. That doesn't mean that inheritance taxes weren't paid. It's not uncommon to come across unregistered parcels of land in conveyancing even now; they're simply registered when it becomes necessary.
  - tryingagainbro 9y ago
    they're simply registered when it becomes necessary. How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? This is weird, especially in a country with 1000+ years legal tradition. One would assume that everything is registered, with the state owning the rest that is not assigned to private parties. In many third world countries it's common for people to work /live on the land that "everyone" knows it's theirs--via family line--but can't prove /register it legally (whatever the law is.)
    - pjc50 9y ago
      It is basically broken, yes, and we should have a proper cadasteral mapping system that makes it straightforward to determine the ownership of a piece of land, combined with actual land-based taxation rather than the odd patchwork of "rates". There are some excellent books by Hernando de Soto on the subject of trying to turn informal claims of inherited land in the third world into proper usable claims.
gumby 9y ago
Even if the subject doesn't interest you: this is a masterfully written flame worthy of reading on that basis. Certainly much more enjoyable than the more typical polemics. As for the article itself, I feel it sadly doesn't even make its own case particularly well, cherry picking statistics and aggregating dissimilar data (e.g. clumping aristos and private corporations together when looking at Scottish landholding) As it happens I agree politically with the writer that aristocracy is not a good idea (though hard to eradicate in any society), not that I care much if Great Britain has problems.
mathattack 9y ago
I'm surprised the aristocracy survived the financial crisis. I would have thought popular discontent would have killed their tax breaks.
hithereagain 9y ago
Also interesting, this article about Venice, where (apparently) the wealthiest families in 1427 are still the wealthiest families https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14... http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-intergenerational-mobility-over-six-centuries http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-intergeneration...

Nuclear weapons? Hydrogen bombs? Intercontinental ballistic missiles? Bluster and belligerence? Oh hang on, wrong countries aristocracy preserving power.

billphipps 9y ago

The grauniad are just a bunch of tabla drumming lentil eating sandal wearing hippies

coldtea 9y ago
Still better -- and more current -- than aristocracy-ass kissing 19th century peasants...
barryhoodlum 9y ago
The Guardian isn't left wing. It's centrist.
- mintone 9y ago
  > The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion.[3][4] The newspaper's reputation as a platform for liberal and left-wing editorial has led to the use of the "Guardian reader" and "Guardianista" as often (but not always) pejorative epithets for those of left-leaning or politically correct tendencies.[5][6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian
  - etplayer 9y ago
    The paper is at best center-left; you'll find no support for any Socialist parties, and they even make fun of Corbyn's labour from time to time. Being liberal doesn't mean 'left', either. The paper always (to my knowledge) runs "PC" articles and especially opinion pieces, but that's not restricted to left-wing sources. It's probably best put by the first sentence: the mainstream left of British political opinion - which turns out to be almost wholly center-left, even Corbyn is a social democrat.
    - UncleSlacky 9y ago
      Indeed, they're still fairly anti-Corbyn (they think a woman should have got the job, no matter how neoliberal she might be), pro-Macron, and they were ridiculously anti-Sanders/pro-Hillary all last year (and still are when the subject comes up).
  - barryhoodlum 9y ago
    I live in the UK and know what the Guardian is. It is not a "hippy's" newspaper. Thanks for the condescending Wikipedia link though.
    - 2017Dude 9y ago
      I live in UK. The Guardian is as left as it gets unless there are some underground communist papers I don't know about.
      - pmyteh 9y ago
        If you're looking for a daily paper well to the left of The Guardian, can I interest you in the Morning Star? Available from your local newsagent, owned by a co-operative closely linked to the Communist Party of Great Britain. No need to go underground! More seriously, The Guardian is a (social) liberal newspaper. It's politics are generally those of the 1980s Social Democratic Party, not the left of the Labour party. It's biases are metropolitan, if anything. That there is no quality paper to their left is mainly because the British newspaper market is already crowded so it's commercially difficult. It doesn't mean that The Guardian can be reasonably labelled as extreme.
        casiotone 9y ago
        The Mirror could be described as further left than the Guardian lately. The past few years especially has seen a shift in the Guardian's position well to the right to the point where even calling it centrist is probably not correct. This is likely a consequence of falling sales and reliance on advertisers - you'll see a large number of sponsored articles on it these days for example.
      - urbanj 9y ago
        Not very politically aware then.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Boothroid 9y ago
  From my observations it's all over the place, with a consistent anti-male theme across several decades whilst still greatly favouring male sports in its sports pages, a consistent feminist theme about the evils of patriarchy and the male gaze etc. whilst still including a significant amount of fashion coverage and carrying advertising for the fashion/cosmetics industry, and a consistent anti-capitalist/globalism theme from some commentators whilst still remaining fervently pro-EU and recently anti-Brexit. It's difficult to take it seriously when it seems so utterly compromised. At least you know where you stand with the bastards at the Telegraph. My personal opinion on the Guardian is that its main function seems to be alleviating the guilt of successful lefties/saving them the hard work of having to form their own opinions.
sctb 9y ago
Please post civilly and substantively here or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- billphipps 9y ago
  ok

pjc50 9y ago

TLDR: property ownership, including leasehold; tax avoidance, such as through trusts; and the House of Lords. There are a lot fewer aristocracy than there were at the start of the 20th century, but those that remain are extremely wealthy.

cmdkeen 9y ago

Chris Bryant is of course a Labour MP. Intriguingly he was also caught up in the expenses scandal. One does wonder whether his book (which is being serialised here) manages to wonder about how the occupants of "the other place" get and hold onto power. It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege. We're starting to see a similar concept return in the form of billionaires being criticised if they fail to sign up to donate their money.

coldtea 9y ago
>It also manages to recycle many of the popular tropes about the aristocracy avoiding taxes, perfectly legally, while ignoring the concept of noblesse oblige which was for a long time the flip side of aristocratic privilege. Yeah, so noble of them...
gadders 9y ago
Not the only scandal he's been involved in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bryant#Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Bryant#Media
MarchHare 9y ago
>avoiding taxes, perfectly legally Given the undemocratic and privileged positions many enjoy in the house of lords, some could say the legality of their methods is nothing more than corruption.

Sacho 9y ago

tl;dr: they're good businessmen and do their best to preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents. The article spends too long telling irrelevant stories to make its few points: - owning land is a great way to get rich - the rich evade taxes by restructuring their business - investing in business keeps your family's wealth intact - networking from elite clubs helps you find opportunities to invest in None of these points are specific to aristocrats. We all strive towards these goals - my family started out living in a rented apartment, and their first milestone was buying their own house. They wanted their kids to go to an elite university so we could get good networking opportunities. Investing in business is just a truism - past a certain point of wealth, it's no longer worth it to sell your time for money, compared to investing. The writer also spends some time carefully conflating the aristocracy of old with the modern aristocrats, in a weird non-sequitur parallel. People of old did something bad, therefore...what, exactly? This is bigotry and prejudice, but we hate rich people, so it's okay. As a whole this reminds me of Varys's riddle from Game of Thrones - if you are so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power?

pjc50 9y ago
> carefully conflating the aristocracy of old with the modern aristocrats > preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving out subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing to do with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance? Note that owning land is a great zero sum way to get rich. If the Duke of Westminster owns half of London, and isn't interested in selling it, you can't invest there. > if you are so incensed at the aristocracy, why do you keep giving them power Please explain how the people are incensed are also "giving them power" in any meaningful sense?
- Sacho 9y ago
  > There's a conflict between these. If your father got his wealth by driving out subsistence farmers at gunpoint, to what extent can you say it's nothing to do with you and that your wealth is a totally meritocratic inheritance? Because it wasn't your father, it was your...how many generations are there between us and the middle ages, again? This is a time jump in the article itself: > Historically, the British aristocracy’s defining feature was not a noble aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self-advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency. > ..... > And when democracy finally and rudely shunted them aside, they found new means of preserving their extravagant riches without the tedium of pretending they sought the common interest. Far from dying away, they remain very much alive. Moreover, the UK has been a democracy for quite some time now, and has had ample time to address inheritance law, and land ownership law. Like the article states: > That is no accident. British laws on land tenure, inheritance tax, corporate governance and discretionary trusts still make it easy to hide wealth from public view. Land is subsidised, and taxed more lightly than residential property. Unearned income bears less of a burden than earned income. The article claims that this is the secret to the power of the aristocracy. This power is given to them by laws, designed and voted in by MPs, who are in turn voted in by the people.

keenerd 9y ago

> The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the Lowlands. This is balanced by their Right to Roam. For those in the US, this will sound completely insane: there is no concept of trespassing provided you act responsibly when on other's land. Access to the country is a common right, and the owners are stewards to it. ~~Arguably, the most practical way for such a law to come into existence is for the bulk of the land to be owned by a tiny minority, and for a democratic majority to create the law.~~ Strike that, didn't research. Sorry.

pjc50 9y ago
Edit: thankyou for amending your comment about this being a good way to achieve right to roam. It's a rare thing from anyone on the internet to admit any kind of inaccuracy. This view ignores all the history and has it exactly backwards. A full description would require at least one book, although I'd suggest starting with http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers http://www.andywightman.com/poor-had-no-lawyers A few things which must be taken into account: - pre-feudal common ownership - confiscation of land during the 1700s Jacobite rebellions. "More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families" is not at all surprising when you consider that those families were given the land from its original owners and occupants at gunpoint by the government. - the Highland Clearances In short, the right to roam pre-existed; it was only removed by extremely questionable action; and the minority who owned the land fought access to it. (For the situation in England&Wales, start at the Kinder Scout mass trespass)
- onetimeusename 9y ago
  The Jacobites were themselves aristocrats and were violently rebelling against the monarchy. Also, the Highland Clearances were not acts of theft, the landowners already owned the land at that point. edit: I should also state that the Highland Clearances were complex but get retold as: "rich people stole land from poor people" often.

tryingagainbro 9y ago

Read the article, and unless I missed it, they didn't mention the real reason: Primogeniture, or one person keeps it all. So you have 100,000 acres from the 15th century and the oldest son gets to it all, intact. If it was split over the centuries, they'd have next to nothing. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-manor-born-the-female-aristocrats-battling-to-inherit-the-title-8656310.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-ma... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of-westminster-hugh-grosvenor-inherit-fortune https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of-...

Quarrelsome 9y ago
bring back Gavelkind?
- tryingagainbro 9y ago
  Why? I see nothing wrong with the this system, the original owner and the state agree to it. Probably UK is better since a huge estate can make /generate much more income /employment than a 1000 plots of 1.2 acres each. They have power because they have money. A window washer that is the second cousin of Queen Elizabeth and with a nobility title is just a window washer, barely making ends meet. Now Queen Elizabeth's second cousin with 50,000 acres, a nobility title and two castles is a different thing :)
zokier 9y ago
This is actually something that I have sort of encountered/pondered in my own life; while my family has never been wealthy by any degree, they have held a bit of land. But in just couple generations the original "estate" has been splintered into huge amount of small pieces, especially with the bigger family sizes of past. Such small pieces are not really that valuable, and can get "lost" (sold more or less voluntarily, or reach a dead end in family tree) more easily. My father has been trying to counteract this arguably destructive force by offering to buy some lands to keep them in the family, but of course his resources are limited and not everyone sees the splintering or the damage caused by it the same way.
9y ago

dalbasal 9y ago

I think the short (or maybe trite) answer is land. The aristocratic "investment thesis" held true in the long term. The UK hasn't had land reform since the civil wars, so big landholdings didn't changed much except in Ireland. To pick a sentence amlost at random: "More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families." Today the dominant economic institution is companies. You could make statements like the one above and replace one with the other. Besides that, it's largely similar. The moral mythology is completely different, but the politics and economics largely hold true. Tryagainbro brings up primogeniture, which is important. Companies have that built in.

eternalban 9y ago

They incorporated select technocratic subsets of the society into the ruling class (the embryonic "deep state"), engineered the 'personhood' of the corporation, and have errected the global framework (currently incubating until the demise of the "Last Empire") that will insure the continuity of their lording it over the rest of us.

Aloha 9y ago

This article presents the idea that aristocracy on whole in Britain is as powerful as it ever was - which is a fallacy - the aristocracy was devastated by the death of an entire generation of its best and brightest in World War I, it was bled deeply by taxes between 1918 and 1980, it was stripped largely of its political power (reduction of hereditary peers, removal of the veto power of the House of Lords, removal of the House of Lords as a court of appeal) - those who survived (with wealth) have survived because of either the specific assets they owned - or because of good business savvy, or a combination of both. Consider that a majority of the peerage didn't come out still owning estates - most of them fell out into the middle class and 'work for a living' - even those with great wealth, now mostly act as businessmen rather than merely shepherds of that wealth.

gwern 9y ago
Overall, this article is a tissue of misleading statistics, anecdotes, and lack of context. The largest figure mentioned is 4 billion pounds; which is about as much as you might earn by selling an odd video game about crude blocks to Microsoft. Wow, so impress, much 'preservation of power'. The House of Lords rhetoric is also odd - how do anecdotes about a largely inactive house they've been mostly expelled out of show that they "preserved their power"? Or take this one: > The figures for Scotland are even more striking. Nearly half the land is in the hands of 432 private individuals and companies. More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2.24m acres, largely in the Lowlands. 'private individuals and companies' != 'aristocracy', by any means. You could say something very similar about the USA, which has not had an aristocracy in 200+ years - because all countries have considerable wealth inequality. And, uh, what exactly are we supposed to take away from dicing Scottish landholdings into "estates of more than 5,000 acres"? Perhaps we are supposed to be astonished by the fact that rich people buy London real estate and "rent" it out? Or perhaps we are supposed to be impressed by > According to the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List, 30 peers are each worth £100m or more. So in other words, they're collectively worth about as much as Magic Leap or Slack? Truly impressive, I see now that England is ruled as much as ever by the aristocracy, it is merely hidden better. Hang the bastards!
- 9y ago

throw2016 9y ago

These are sophisticated power and wealth structures that are adept at keeping and growing their wealth and power intact over tens of generations. The more wealth you have the more potential impact you have whatever the system, and feudal power structures like the UK which were never broken unlike say China and Russia with land reform have strong historical and real world ties to power. Beneficiaries will obviously justify or diminish its impact, and those not doing well in the current system will direct their anger and frustration here. Land is the source of wealth and power and is finite. These are generational conflicts as societies figure out the best way to manage their assets and resources. The aristocracy is simply self interested like all of us in doing their best to retain what they have accumulated. Capitalism has not solved or addressed inheritance, its a nod nod wink wink kind of thing, and claims of equality and the level playing field while loudly made do not hold up the slightest in the real world we live in.

maxxxxx 9y ago
In Germany nobility is not as much in the public eye as in Britain but when you read the news I am always surprised how many of them are still there with enormous wealth.
- lvkleist 9y ago
  Only the ones in the west. Most of the Prussian aristocrats who owned land in what became western Poland or the German Democratic Republic were disowned and fled/were killed.

zeveb 9y ago

> Historically, the British aristocracy’s defining feature was not a noble aspiration to serve the common weal but a desperate desire for self-advancement. They stole land under the pretence of piety in the early middle ages, they seized it by conquest, they expropriated it from the monasteries and they enclosed it for their private use under the pretence of efficiency. They grasped wealth, corruptly carved out their niche at the pinnacle of society and held on to it with a vice-like grip. They endlessly reinforced their own status and enforced deference on others through ostentatiously exorbitant expenditure on palaces, clothing and jewellery. They laid down a strict set of rules for the rest of society, but lived by a different standard. That sounds like a very good description of the Bolsheviks the Guardian supported so fervently.

lurcio 9y ago

As for the 'British' Crown, if my memory serves me right the Domesday book records that William the Conq. did a 50/40/10 land split with the Church and his nobles. (To this day a significant percentage of land is not even recorded in the land registry. We might assume this is held in perpetuity without falling under inheritance laws. Everyone else is to this day a tenant on the land). It would have been more than prodigal to lose when the system is in your hands... Daniel 4 is interesting in this regard: "This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men." Bless them!

pmyteh 9y ago
That land is not registered in the Land Registry doesn't necessarily mean that it's held in some kind of perpetual corporation. Compulsory registration on sale was phased in after 1925 and, IIRC, you weren't obliged to register land if it passed by inheritance or gift until very recently. That doesn't mean that inheritance taxes weren't paid. It's not uncommon to come across unregistered parcels of land in conveyancing even now; they're simply registered when it becomes necessary.
- tryingagainbro 9y ago
  they're simply registered when it becomes necessary. How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? This is weird, especially in a country with 1000+ years legal tradition. One would assume that everything is registered, with the state owning the rest that is not assigned to private parties. In many third world countries it's common for people to work /live on the land that "everyone" knows it's theirs--via family line--but can't prove /register it legally (whatever the law is.)
  - pjc50 9y ago
    It is basically broken, yes, and we should have a proper cadasteral mapping system that makes it straightforward to determine the ownership of a piece of land, combined with actual land-based taxation rather than the odd patchwork of "rates". There are some excellent books by Hernando de Soto on the subject of trying to turn informal claims of inherited land in the third world into proper usable claims.

gumby 9y ago

Even if the subject doesn't interest you: this is a masterfully written flame worthy of reading on that basis. Certainly much more enjoyable than the more typical polemics. As for the article itself, I feel it sadly doesn't even make its own case particularly well, cherry picking statistics and aggregating dissimilar data (e.g. clumping aristos and private corporations together when looking at Scottish landholding) As it happens I agree politically with the writer that aristocracy is not a good idea (though hard to eradicate in any society), not that I care much if Great Britain has problems.

mathattack 9y ago

I'm surprised the aristocracy survived the financial crisis. I would have thought popular discontent would have killed their tax breaks.

hithereagain 9y ago

Also interesting, this article about Venice, where (apparently) the wealthiest families in 1427 are still the wealthiest families https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14... http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-intergenerational-mobility-over-six-centuries http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-intergeneration...