[bko]

Reminds me of the quote:

"My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel."

Wealth dissipates very quickly especially with the nature of dilution as a bloodline grows exponentially. If you notice most inherited wealth that's more than a few generations is in authoritative states. I don't think its due to the estate tax as there are always ways to get around it.

[lumost]

An alternate way of viewing this is that large productive resources are channeled into providing consumption for an exponentially growing bloodline rather than re-invested for general profit.

There was a general practice that samurai funded positions for the children of their servants. By the time of the meiji restoration the number of servants a Samurai supported had grown by nearly an order of magnitude. Meanwhile the productive land remained fixed.

Unfortunately this lead to the productive assets of Japan being directed to support an increasingly capital inefficient consumption system. There is no natural reason to assume that an estate would be obliterated with time.