Time to Return to Aristocracy

Great Debates
1

But a modern, updated form.

First, I’ll tell you how it will work, then I’ll tell you why it should exist.

Once a year, at a lavish and gala event, televised worldwide and given a great deal of pomp, ceremony, and promotion, the results of a simple, secret, and very very secure auction are revealed. One by one, starting from the lowest, the ten highest bidders in this auction are announced. And quite an auction there is, for the prize is nothing less than entry into the official aristocracy of the entire world.

And what do these people get? They get extremely impressive sounding titles. They get the best seats at theatres, can go to the front of the line at government offices, and fancy, impressive plaques to hang on their walls. They get membership in a highly exclusive international House of Lords, fully empowered to issue proclamations, judgements, edicts, and fiats. They get praised, feted, deferred to, and in general, are made in every way possible to feel that they are, indeed, better than everyone else in the world.

And they get absolutely no real power.

None at all. Zip. Nothing.

In their House of Lords, a very simple method would keep the bidding fierce. The highest bidder of the ten would have ten votes in this body, the second highest would get nine votes, and so on, down to the tenth highest getting only one vote. The grandness of the titles, and the number and lushness of the meaningless privileges, will also be strictly rationed out according to this rank.

So why do all this? For a few reasons.

Firstly, there seems to be a very strong urge in the human race to achieve status. A great deal of money and energy is spent in acquiring wealth and power for this very reason. This directs this sometimes highly destructive drive towards a simple and harmless goal.

Also, the revenue from this auction can be used to fund social programs which, otherwise, this sort of person might resent funding via taxation. This way, it can be seen as highly ego-gratifying, fully voluntary charity.

But would people bid for this powerless role? I think so. The urge to be seen at better than others is very strong in people, and every method reasonable would be used to reinforce this idea. Power, as a drive, is also powerful, but I think when divorced somewhat from the drive for status, will not be nearly as popular.

The details are open to fiddling, of course. Perhaps the ideal number of members to this body would be twenty, or five, or some other number.

But I sincerely think that this would be a good idea. Money would be raised from the rich, the rich would be happy to be recognized as superior, no real or lasting harm would come to freedom and democracy, and the world would have its own royal family to obsess and fuss over.

And every year, it would happen all over again.

So what do you think?

2

Putting aside the significant logistical problems of the proposal, which I’m sure could be worked out with enough effort and money spent; there are 2 problems.

  1. The very rich can already get praise, make proclamations, join exclusive clubs, and sit in the good seats whenever they want, so why would they pay more money to do so.

  2. Status seems to be less important than power to these sort of people. While there is no doubt quite a bit of one-upmanship amongst the billionaires, in the form of sports teams, art collections, charitable giving, and huge houses; the thing that really seems to drive those folks is power. Consider that many super-rich people spend lavishly on attempts to influence politics through donations to politicians and the formation of interest groups, some run for office directly.

All in all, while your scheme might make money from the ‘merely wealthy’ athlete and celebrity types, the guys with the real money already have all of that and more.

3

I think you have a strange misapprehension of how powerful people really think. They aren’t interested in the symbols of power - they want real power. Why would anyone spend millions of dollars to get into some meaningless body that has no actual power when they could spend the same amount of money getting voted into some real body like Congress? As for prestige, that would come with the real power.

4

Rich people is stupid! So, we should have no trouble tricking them into giving up large chunks of their cash for meaningless titles!

I’m sure they will never catch on…

-XT

5

There’s another angle on this.
One might make a good living by selling hand-milled, jewel-encrusted safety pins to the very rich. One is far more likely to make a good living by selling millions of safety pins to regular people.

Instead of a phony aristocracy, that is redundant, at best, to the people who can buy in, why not sell little slivers of fake status to any fool with a few bucks. In fact, we already have such things: Who’s Who in America, glamour photos, fraudulent modeling/acting agencies, ‘buy a star’ companies, walk-in recording studios, and vanity book publishing.

So, maybe the idea does work, just with a different demographic.

6

If you want to make some money, create a popular virtual world and then sell status items (rooms, property, vehicles, clothing, furniture, etc etc) to the players. This will certainly work if you keep the costs fairly low for most items but reasonably high for a few high status items.

In the real world though most people aren’t going to be fooled into dropping large boatloads of cash on something that is purely symbolic and meaningless. Rich people already have access to most of the perks described in the OP. A title? That might work with the few rich still left back in Europe but by and large the US rich (and the rich in most non-European nations) aren’t going to be all that keen on it. Oh, they MIGHT drop a few thousand bucks here or there on something like that…but they aren’t going to be giving away large chunks of their capital in what is obviously a scheme to simply fleece them. Rich people might not be, as a ‘class’, a bunch of mental giants…but they ain’t THAT stupid.

-XT

7

Does this remind anyone else of Liev Schrieber’s character in daytrippers where he is trying to explain to the New York aristocracy why we should have an aristocracy?

8

They may not be that stupid, but are they that vain? Competitive?

You have to realize that rich people spend enormous amounts of money just trying to impress other rich people with how rich they are. Why? Because no matter how rich you are, you’re still trying to keep up with your peers, or better yet, bury them in the dust.

My plan would be a way for them to truly get ahead of other rich people. And the best thing is, you have to be richer than everyone else in order to win, more or less. That’s why it’s an auction.

Being able to lord it over other rich people, to have all of society confirm that you’re better than everybody else?

That’s the main reason a lot of people get rich in the first place!

Sure, the Warren Buffets and Bill Gates’ of the world will laugh, shake their heads, and forget about it.

But the Conrod Blacks and Rupert Murdock’s will lap it up.

9

Well, there’s a little matter of a constitutional prohibition: : “No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.”

In the United States, rich people are recognized as superior because they’re rich. We don’t have a historic culture of honoring a titled class, just the opposite in fact, so I don’t think you can impose one by fiat.

10

OK, so don’t run it through the government. Or if you really want it to be the government doing this, pass an amendment. Really, I can’t see there being any problem to this beyond it just not working: It probably wouldn’t cause any harm.

On the other hand, though, I suspect that the very rich already have avenues available to them to gain not only the trappings of nobility, but the title itself. Have a talk with Lizzy 2, and ask her how many orphanages you’d need to fund for her to grant you an earldom. Use your money to woo a noble of the appropriate sex, and marry into the aristocracy. Find some obscure European house that’s down on its luck, and buy the title outright. All of these can be done, but they aren’t very often-- Why would the people who are declining these methods existing methods go for this new one?

11

For one thing, these would be GLOBAL titles, for which you had to out-spend a lot of other rich people, thus proving who is truly the richest. They could be handed out by the UN and therefore recognized by all UN countries.

I’m pretty sure a lot of rich people would spend a fair bit to be recognized worldwide as one of the 10 most prestigious, wealthy, and important people in the world. Certain athletes, rock stars, and other attention-seekers would love being the centre of attention for the whole world.

12

There is already an aristocracy. There is no reason they would spend money to reduce their own power. The thought is silly.

13

Yes, they certainly appear to be as vain and competitive as the non-rich.

Sure. I said as much.

Your plan would be a way for them to spend a huge pile of money to get things they already have. How is it ‘truly getting ahead’ of another billionaire to overpay in order to get good theater seats, have obsequious yes-men, belong to a club of rich guys, hang some plaques, and make proclamations? If a billionaire cares about such things (and many do) he does them already. Ever heard of a press release? Endowment to a museum or university? Butler? Executive assistant?

Lord what, exactly, over other rich people? That would be one strange conversation.

Monty Burns: “I spent $10 Billion on a fancy title! I’m the Pontifex Maximus of Micronesia! Look at me! You have to admit I’m better than you!”

Thurston Howell III “I don’t have to do any such thing! While you were out playing royalty, I spent $10 Billion buying a Vanadium mining company. It generated $40,000 of revenue while you were flapping your gums just now. See you at La Boheme tonight. I’m bringing the Senator. Oh, and I’m the Emperor of the Sargasso Sea.”

Are you sure? Most people seem to want money because they like the stuff they can buy with it. Who wants a title that confers no power?

14

All titles of nobility are global titles. When a Japanese bigwig comes to the UK and attends a ball, he’s afforded the same respect, precedence, etc. as an Englishman of equivalent title. Heck, the US doesn’t even have nobility at all, but you can bet that when the Duke of Buckingham visits New York, he gets the best seats on Broadway.

15

Probably not. I recall an artist back in the 80’s ( IIRC ) who produced art that became a status symbol for some reason. He sold it for absurd prices, and started farming out production to other artists under his name. He admitted all this, and that he was just milking the wealthy for all he could - it didn’t stop people from buying his stuff. In general, when it comes to status people act like idiots.

The problem with the OPs proposal is that I doubt that you could convince many people that such an artificial title is a status symbol in the first place. Owning expensive art is an already existent status symbol in our society; having a title isn’t. But if you pulled it off, yes, you probably COULD trick large numbers of the wealthy into handing over piles of cash for empty titles indefinitely.

16

I should admit right now that to pull this off would require a massive and incredibly intricate and difficult marketing campaign. You would have to convince the rich, the regular folks, and the media that these titles truly did make someone global royalty… Kings and Queens of the WORLD. The world press would have to give them the kind of attention royalty gets, you’d have to make it seem as portentious and elegant and refined and above all HIGH STATUS as you possibly can, and the whole thing would have to go off like clockwork. The rich can well afford to be fickle!

But I think it would be possible, with the right people on board.

Once you’re over the hurdle of getting the thing to “take” in the first place, it would perpetuate itself, for the most part, just like the Royal Family does.

The social programs of the world would get badly needed cash, the rich would get a big ego boost, the people would get an international royal family to obsess over, dote on, and complain about, and in the end, democracy and freedom and suchlike are not harmed at all.

I think it could work.

17

So are you saying that with a (realistically infeasible) huge amount of effort, coordination, and money, one could fool a tiny group of ver rich people into caring about made-up titles in a sort of grand, global ‘emperor’s new clothes’ trick? Could we not instead fool them into caring about about other things? Maybe we could convince them to worship a rock or something. Why not cut out the middle step and start a worldwide craze to give a lot of their money to charity?

18

I’ve had a similar idea, but I don’t think it should be voluntary.

Why not have a confiscatory wealth tax for net worths over 10 000 x the national mean? Then you can say, “Congratulations Mr Buffett, you have won the game of Economy, here’s a snazzy title! Now cut it out & let other people play.”

19

The startup costs could be considerable, yes, but if the plan worked correctly, it would continue to provide revenue indefinitely.

And “giving to charity” is something one does on a whim. This way, they are buying something, and fighting one another for the privilege.

Now remember, this is not a scam. It’s the creation of an intangible, which is a horse of a variant hue. The positions created will be just as real as any other form of royalty or aristocracy that has ever existed.

And as Heinlein said in “The Man Who Sold The Moon”, an intangible is the most honest product in the world, because it’s always worth exactly what you’re willing to pay for it.

These people will receive value for their dollars. They’ll get something completely unique in the world, and it will “pay off” in loads of little privileges, honors, and so forth, completely unavailable any other way.

These things mean a lot, a hell of a lot, to certain kinds of people, some of whom are quite wealthy. It’s that simple.

20

As I said before, you seem to have no understanding of how most rich people think.

Rich people are natural targets of scammers so their credulity is constantly being tested. The handful of rich people who would be foolish enough to fall for this are already losing their fortunes to better schemes than this. So anyone who’s hanging on to their money would see through this scheme in a second.