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.
<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-manor-born-the-female-aristocrats-battling-to-inherit-the-title-8656310.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/to-the-ma...</a>
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of-westminster-hugh-grosvenor-inherit-fortune" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/10/new-duke-of-...</a>
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.<p>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.
> 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.<p>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.<p>~~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.
I think the short (or maybe trite) answer is <i>land</i>. 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.<p>To pick a sentence amlost at random:<p><i>"More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5,000 acres are held by a list of aristocratic families."</i><p>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.<p>Tryagainbro brings up primogeniture, which is important. Companies have that built in.
These are sophisticated power and wealth structures that are adept at keeping and growing their wealth and power intact over tens of generations.<p>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.<p>Beneficiaries will obviously justify or diminish its impact, and those not doing well in the current system will direct their anger and frustration here.<p>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.<p>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.
Also interesting, this article about Venice, where (apparently) the wealthiest families in 1427 are still the wealthiest families<p><a href="https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/" rel="nofollow">https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14...</a><p><a href="http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-intergenerational-mobility-over-six-centuries" rel="nofollow">http://voxeu.org/article/what-s-your-surname-intergeneration...</a>
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.
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).<p>It would have been more than prodigal to lose when the system is in your hands...<p>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."<p>Bless them!
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.<p>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)<p>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.
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.<p>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.
tl;dr: they're good businessmen and do their best to preserve the wealth they were handed over from their parents.<p>The article spends too long telling irrelevant stories to make its few points:<p>- owning land is a great way to get rich<p>- the rich evade taxes by restructuring their business<p>- investing in business keeps your family's wealth intact<p>- networking from elite clubs helps you find opportunities to invest in<p>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.<p>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.<p>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?
TLDR: property ownership, including leasehold; tax avoidance, such as through trusts; and the House of Lords.<p>There are a lot fewer aristocracy than there were at the start of the 20th century, but those that remain are extremely wealthy.
> 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.<p>That sounds like a very good description of the Bolsheviks the Guardian supported so fervently.