Lording it, over: A new history of the modern British aristocracy

Andrew is ungallant so it is reasonable to strip him of his knighthoods. But it is rather silly to strip him of the title Prince for behaving like a prince.

Now properly just called Andrew, not “Prince” anything. (It was interesting to see most British news outlets make that change immediately while the US ones lagged).

Having an apolitical (or unelected) and slow changing second chamber is a useful counterbalance to elected officials running amok. There’s no “great” answer to this that I’m aware of but it has been a viable compromise.

Why isn't it a good idea? Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children

That assumes our knowledge of Detroit is more informed that yours of the UK ;-)

Generally there is a lot of propaganda around at the moment, so take that with a pinch of salt. The UK is not as well off as the US generally, but this does not mean there is a breakdown of society or law and order.

The propagandists would have you believe that there is a massive crime wave and social breakdown due to immigration, but what people are mostly worried about in actuality is job uncertainty and backlogged public services.

There are areas of wealth and of deprivation both inside and outside London. There is political and economic uncertainty because the UK economy is imbalanced, and most people expect a difficult few years and are sceptical that the government knows how to fix the issues (and that vested interests won't prevent the solution)

Detroit is known as a place with lots of abandoned buildings and I don’t think something similar exists in the UK. There are poor regions but AFIAK they don’t look like Detroit. Many high street shops are closed but it doesn’t mean that everything is bad. High street shops were hit hard first by COVID lockdowns then by high inflation (people can afford less) but rents continued to be high. It sad to see a row of boarded shops but it’s not everywhere and eventually landlords probably will reduce rent prices.

This is a somewhat silly question because you could probably get anecdotal replies of all kinds to it. Some things are different to how they used to be, and in some cases different in ways that feel bad. For example, there are more empty shops in the town centre where I live compared to 20 years ago, which for some people evokes a strong emotional reaction and a sense of loss.

When you say "like Detroit" I assume, having never been, that you mean a high crime rate and unemployment rate? You could visit the ONS: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand... https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin...

My own personal experience tends to back up what the data here show (no significant changes really) - I teach in a large secondary school and really, kids today are not massively different from how they've ever been. They face challenges in navigating the vast amounts of information and misinformation presented nowadays, but we do try to educate them as best as possible in respect of this.

Cheers and hope this helps.

But but but... It's a fundamental part of his identity!!! /S

I don’t think you could call it reasonably successful. For example, much of European history consisted of war and succession disputes. The entire system of aristocracy was prone to instability and shifting alliances. It turns out hereditary succession is not a good way to choose a competent political leader.

How can you have a democracy when 90% of the populous is working 12 hour days 6-7 days a week just to pay the bills? How are they going to have an opinion on anything, other than “Stuff is too expensive”.

Republics, like Venice and San Marino (oldest Republic still in existence), endured for a millennia.

I'll accept they don't have a good track record for defending themselves from hereditary monarchies. e.g. Nizny Novgorod to Muscovy, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (technically elected monarchy) to Prussia-Russia-Austria.

I'm sort of amazed that democracies came into existence at all.

On the other hand, I guess the actions of kings were a catalyst. (crazy taxation, closing ports, quartering troops, etc)

> (Though over in America, most of the historic grand mansions are now tourist attractions, for lack of heirs with the wealth and interest in maintaining them.)

Part of this is that the "old money" tended to withdraw from public life after the Great Depression when they decided infamy was a serious liability.

That's why one struggles to name any of the living heirs of the big names of that era, who are absolutely still filthy stinking rich, while newbies like Musk, everyone knows. The culture of what Fussell calls the "top out-of-sight" is to remain sufficiently anonymous that nobody knows their given names unless one goes looking (and even then, it may be hard to find much trace of them). A bunch of them don't show up on any of those "richest" lists not because they couldn't rank, but because you effectively have to opt-in to those, for enough of your wealth to be traceable without great effort to get counted.

Owning a highly-visible Newport mansion could well be a mark of poor taste, among that set.

They still have their grand houses, they just may not (though, may) be in the Georgian or Neoclassical style or whatever, and they're probably not visible (from remotely close-up, at any rate) from any public road. Drive minor highways in the right parts of the country and look for nice (though, not necessarily imposing or impressive) gates leading into what looks like a simple, wooded lot with an unremarkable, perhaps even gravel, drive that immediately disappears into the trees, and you've probably found one, and they're all over the place... plus their families will usually own plenty of extremely nice, but not flashy, well-located houses and condos and such in more-populated areas.

I read a biography of a British politician who was later elevated to the aristocracy (although I guess his family was somewhere between commoner and aristocrat prior to that). It said his family took a financial hit because of a decline in crops in the late 1800s. I dug it up and found out that the US was partly responsible for that actually because of cheaper imported grains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression_of_British_ag...

Many aristocrats relied on agricultural income from their property holdings.

Another interesting point is that it seems like the majority of titles were awarded relatively recently as in within the last 120-150 years. That doesn't mean there aren't some older ones but it changes the perception of them from being a centuries old group of warlords or relatives of the king to a group of lawyers, military officers, and politicians.

>(Though over in America, most of the historic grand mansions are now tourist attractions, for lack of heirs with the wealth and interest in maintaining them.)

Taxes had a lot to do with it--though, really, in the UK as well. In Newport RI, a lot of the gilded era mansions ended up donated to a local college because, as you say, the heirs didn't have either the wealth or the interest in maintaining (and playing the taxes on) them. A lot of these places were also summer "cottages" and would require a huge amount of money to update to modern standards. I know someone whose extended family owned one of these places (not in Newport but similar) and it was going to be a huge expense; don't know how it ended up.

"Meritocracy" was a satirical term invented to mock the way that the markers and abilities suggested by "merit" tend to accrue self-reinforcingly to the "meritorious" and those connected to them, creating a stratified society that pretends to justice and legitimacy by appeals to "natural" outcomes of "natural" advantages or "better work ethic", and dismissal of calls for reform with pleas that changes could only result in "less-meritorious", so, necessarily, worse, rule.

The word itself is basically a joke about the circularity and word-game bullshit of "well we assign power according to merit, so anything else is necessarily less-just". If it's not clear, consider: "Goodocracy" or "Bestocracy", or "everyone-gets-what-they-deserve-ocracy". Like... yes, sure, but the details are everything, that's just a vague appeal to stuff approximately everyone wants.

It's entirely hilarious that it's been adopted as a serious term.

Merit is from Latin, and cracy is a Greek suffix, so combining them together is nonsense. Aristo has the advantage of actually being Greek for "the best."

The word meritocracy was actually popularized (1) by British Labour Party politician Michael Young in his 1958 satirical novel "The Rise of the Meritocracy" which was basically the Idiocracy of its day- in the future idiots will reign supreme sort of thing. But the book was definitely meant to mock the entire idea of society that we live in today. Right down to how the society in the book defined "merit" as basically IQ plus how hard you work, it was a dystopia that came true.

1: Apparently someone else actually coined the term two years earlier in a peer reviewed paper, but Young was where it broke through into general use.

In that sense, all types of government are "rule of the best". The differences are just in the metrics used to determine who...

And speaking of country where reality-TV-stars are Kings ...