[bartread]

> want rentier incomes with low risk.

I don't know if I buy your point about inherited wealth but there is what I'd describe as a stifling culture of rentseeking that, if not actively encouraged is certainly tolerated and overlooked, at many levels of society, and across both businesses and public organisations. And once you become aware of it you start to realise how obnoxious and oppressive it is.

We certainly don't lack for talent, but we're very good at suppressing or wasting it.

[te_chris]

Excellent comments both yours and the one you replied to. Once you see it you really can’t unsee it.

The UK is a marvel that it manages to cultivate such an incredible creative scene in the shadow of the rent seeking mediocrity.

[usrusr]

From my continental Europe perspective I suspect that Americans will inevitably look at those inherited wealth structures through their assumptions of unbounded rent maximization, oblivious to a certain element of responsibility that will be far more present in Europeans, continental or not. "Only because you can squeeze out that penny doesn't necessarily mean that you should" is something that exists in most places that aren't the US. American wealth seems to have that siloed off into charity completely separate from how the money is made than others, "exploit hard/donate hard". I'm certainly not suggesting that everything is fine in the UK, but I do think that certain assumptions that are true in American will tint the picture quite considerably.

[hsjqllzlfkf]

"there is a culture of rent seeking" must be the understatement of the year. What the UK understands as "entrepreneurship" is buying property to rent. This is everyone from your grandma to the shiniest MBAs.

[bartread]

Aye. Nothing against housing associations that provide much needed social housing but the vast majority of private landlords[0], including AirBnB owners, are absolute parasites that have an entirely corrosive effect on communities and society as a whole. Indolent freeloading bloodsuckers.

[0] I'm sure there are exceptions: in fact I know there are. There are always exceptions. 20-odd years ago for a while I shared a flat with a couple of guys where the private landlord deliberately charged far below market rent in order to be able to offer affordable accommodation to people who weren't well off. Good people, the family that owned that place.

[truckerbill]

You don't buy the point about a country with royal family that owns vast swathes of land?

[bemusedthrow75]

No such point was made (regarding a royal family).

Incidentally, the Royal Family themselves privately own 1/250th of the UK's land, and it is mostly not particularly valuable. Only about £15bn.

As a proportion this is only four times what the richest private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns of the USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share pretty quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say?

The Duke of Westminster (not a member of the royal family) has a physically much smaller (private) estate that is worth more than half of the royal estate.

What the royal family own privately should not be confused with what the "Crown" owns. The Crown estate is basically owned and operated by the state.

[cjrp]

> As a proportion this is only four times what the richest private landowner (the Emmersons) in the USA owns of the USA. And the Emmersons have come by their share pretty quickly by comparison, wouldn't you say?

If anything, I feel like the speed (or how recently the land was acquired) is actually in the Emmersons favour here. A generation or two ago somebody got wildly successful, vs. land being inherited because your 30x great-grandfather was Henry VIII.

[bemusedthrow75]

Yeah. Swings and roundabouts though; most of the truly long-held property of the royal family has become the Crown estate, and over time the family has had to make much more of its income from that wealth due to the contraction of the Civil List.

Charles himself will only have income from his estate (whereas his mother had income from the Civil List)

What I meant to say is that in the blink of an eye, realistically -- in a couple of generations -- you could and probably will have a situation where a single land-owning family in the USA could end up with a very similar proportion of a _vastly_ larger country.

It's probably in the nature of land-owning for this to happen: someone ends up with all of it, then can't maintain it, and it ends up being sold off or dispensed to the state, then sold off, reaccumulated, and the circle continues.

And I think it's a mistake to see the royal family's land ownership as a source of power and influence. Unfortunately we give them the power and influence for no really good reason; the land is a side thing.

[usrusr]

"It's probably in the nature of land-owning for this to happen: someone ends up with all of it, then can't maintain it, and it ends up being sold off or dispensed to the state, then sold off, reaccumulated, and the circle continues."

Realistically, once someone owns everything, they'd never ever have to sell. Because they could just rent it out temporarily for the same price. Demand isn't that flexible and in absence of other sellers, where else would a would-be buyer take their money?