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Because it would have been sold off by a previous government. (see virtually every other money making asset.)

• permo-w 1y ago
  see any national park?
  • KaiserPro 1y ago
    How much of the UKs national parks are publicly owned? (dartmoor is owned partly by the crown)
• BrenBarn 1y ago
  But this seems like the fallacy of comparing a benevolent and somewhat reasonable monarchy to a malicious or foolish non-monarchist government. Any system can wind up with stupid people doing stupid things. The difference is if you get one stupid person in as king they could sell everything off or cause who knows what damage, whereas with a more diffuse government one person can't do as much harm. (The current situation in the US also shows how it's important to keep the power diffused rather than centralized in one person.)
  • KaiserPro 1y ago
    > if you get one stupid person in as king they could sell everything off Thats the point, its not trivial to sell it off, because it was set up to counteract a fooling king in exchange for a stipend. This system was explicitly designed to take an asset from the crown and place it in trust so that the king could get a steady income, ostensibly from assets that had unpredictable income. Thus the crown estate was born, which has a bunch of rules, most notably about taking on debt.