This is an interesting question that comes up often
Why don't our billionaires build beautiful things as their Gilded Age counterparts did?
Because egalitarian mass democracy neither inculcates an honor-bound
duty of noblesse oblige, nor incentivizes commons protection🧵👇
This is a cycle that often repeats: whereas the old wealth has (if
properly taught virtue, as it should be) an understood duty to the
commons because of the immense privilege with which it was born, "new
men" only rarely grasp that duty
For one, they see their wealth as earned rather than the result of
privilege, and so like Morrison in the Flashman series are loathe to
part with it when called by duty to do so
But, more than that, they have a point: if self-made, they weren't born
with the duties and privilege attendant to the silver spoon, and so
don't have the same view of duty to the commons
This is why, as a side note, the House of Lords championed labor law
reform that got rid of child labor, limited hours, etc.; duty
That difference in attitude presents itself in various ways, and one of
my favorite ways to tell it is, as I did with @EMBurlingame recently,
through the lens of English fox-hunting
Originally, the hunting of the fox was an activity that united most of
the country classes. Lords, gentlemen, yeoman farmers, and tenant
farmers participated together as a group, in their local hunt; the Lord
kept and paid for the dogs, the farmers let their fields be used, the
hunters paid for damage to the fences and fields incurred in the hunts,
and events like hunt dinners brought the country society together rather
than keeping the ranks stratified. Such wasn't always the case, and
certainly it wasn't an egalitarian levelling of society, but is was a
fun activity in which the different classes participated and got along
Then came the second half of the 19th Century, and the Industrial
Revolution destroyed much of that. Namely, railroads enabled men from
all over (but particularly London) to travel to hunts in communities in
which they didn't live and had no ties, and the new wealth created by it
put people who had no ties of duty, tradition, or life to a community
in the hunting field amidst the different classes. They, somewhat unlike
the upper ranks, despised their inferiors (probably out of a sense of
inferiority to the lords) and were rude to the farmers who once
participated in the hunts while driving them off the hunting fields
That led, in turn, to the decline of fox-hunting as farmers stopped
letting their fields be used, put up barbed wire in place of wood fences
that made hunting too dangerous, and didn't cooperate in keeping
livestock-killed foxes alive. More importantly, it created bad blood
between the country classes that pushed things in a more radical
political direction
So, whereas the old orders had, whatever their varied flaws, a general
sense of duty to and commonality with much of the commons that created a
steady society generally lacking in bad blood, the new men didn't
Rather, less secure in their wealth and social standing, they had
sharper elbows and more of a willingness to, whatever the eventual cost,
attempt to establish their own standing and show their superiority. Not
only does that show a lack of long-term sense, it shows the utter lack
of a sense of duty and noblesse oblige, which makes some sense given
that they weren't nobles
This then leads back to architecture and what is built:
The Old World mindset, whether involving new men like Carnegie, JP
Morgan and Rockefeller who generally adopted it or the older families
who had long had it, generally meant a very low time preference, a sense
of duty to the commons, and a willingness to, within the proper
hierarchical bounds, get along. Further, lacking as it did the
subversive desire to tear down, it tended to have good taste and show it
through the creation of beauty
What this produced, in terms of public architecture, is structures that
are beautiful, well-built, and long-lasting. Two prominent examples come
to mind.
One is the old Eaton Hall, built up by the 1st Duke of Westminster: not
only did he want to build something magnificent, but he saw it as his
duty to keep it and its grounds open to visitors of all classes to that
they might get something out of its existence. Death duties forced its
destruction, but while it existed it provided countless jobs and much
enjoyment for those in its environs
The other is the collection of libraries built by Carnegie: in this
respect like the best of the old order, he thought it to be his duty to
lift up the public through providing public access to education, and for
those structures doing so to be beautiful and thus uplifting rather
than ugly and utilitarian. So, many of the public libraries that still
exist are marvelous, stone structures the existence of which is
inspiring and uplifting rather than depressing
The thing is, the spirit that builds such structures at such great
expense merely because they are good and beautiful rather than in the
hope of pecuniary gain, is unique to a specific mindset, that described
above
If not cultivated by the teaching of virtue and duty, the example set by existing men, and the cultivation of taste, it dies out
So, men like Carnegie and Morgan had the English landed elite to look
to, and thus to learn from in the hope of being gentlemen with noble
bearings. That aided them, and led to things like the Carnegie libraries
and JP Morgan twice saving the American financial system and dollar.
The absence of such men to look up to as paragons of proper behavior in
the upper echelons of the social hierarchy is a problem, as the new men
are not taught to act in such a manner and instead, like their spiritual
compatriots on the fox fields, cause rancor by trying to bully their
way into prominence
Now, we are decidedly without such men to set the standard and turn out
new Carnegies and Morgans into pro-social men who build and think for
the long-term good rather than merely in terms of wants
While this presents across the spectrum, it is clearest in architecture.
Thinking not about the long-term good and raising the public up, but
rather about gaining notoriety through shocking, what new men of great
wealth do donate buildings on the Carnegie mold largely create hideous
glass and steel structures that depress/shock rather than inspire and
will fall apart relatively quickly, whereas stone buildings last for
centuries
Bill and Melinda Gates Hall is a great example of this
And that's if they decide to act for the public good at all: will the
exception of Elon's purchase of X, most use "philanthropy" to feel good
and avoid taxes, rather than acting out of a sense of duty to the public
good
Hence the modern art that's donated, the awful modernist architecture,
and so on: it's ugly nonsense, doing nothing to build the spirit or
educate the public in virtue and history, but it is "expensive" and so
is a large if hideous tax break
And, that's if philanthropy is even engaged in. As Fussell notes in his
magnificent book Class, now the mega-rich generally hide out of sight
and out of mind because of the hostile government policy of the 19th
century
So, because they want to avoid a redux of the 90% death and income
taxes, the trust-busting destruction of private property, the tax-enable
expropriation of great estates, they hide out behind the scenes and
whatever societal benefits would be reaped by their wealth never happen
Thus, the system itself, one of egalitarian mass democracy in which the
commons is worked into a spiteful desire to level and enabled in so
doing by voting laws, prevents great public works from being made, as
doing so would serve as a reminder of the wealth and present the idea
that it ought be taxed away
So, if you want billionaires to build magnificent structures again,
what's needed is a shift in understanding back toward the old way, and
policy changes that restore trust on both sides of the equation
Combining long-term thinking with a sense of duty, of noblesse oblige,
and the resultant understanding that the commons must be aided and
protected, is the way to get whatever our needed equivalent of the
Carnegie Libraries is. Without that sense of duty and properly
inculcated virtue, we'll just keep getting ugly nonsense, if anything at
all
Similarly, there has to be some change that rids us of the tax version
of the Sword of Damocles: now, those who would be building great things
are largely warned away from doing so by the implicit threat that if
wealth is shown, it will be taxed to nothing. That inculcates a culture
of hoarding wealth, of doing little with it for fear that spending or
giving some of it will lead to its total destruction, and thus prevents
the construction of big and beautiful things; Eaton Hall cost around
$150 million in modern currency to build, even if it was kept open to
the public, would that not lead to the builder getting raked over the
coals today? So, the whack-a-mole style of wealth destruction via
taxation has to die, or else this will continue
That's a tall order, but it's better than the alternative, which is the
continual accumulation of assets by cold, impersonal corporations like
Blackstone and BlackRock
They never build beautiful public structures, have no desire to do so,
and see no duty other than to extract every drop of value for the
short-term benefit of their shareholders
This is already what's happening in England, what has been enabled by
the post-Parliament Bill sky-high death and income taxes, and is utterly
destroying their once-beautiful and pleasant world
We must head in the opposite direction of that, which is the sort of
pro-social world of duty, obligation, and honor that existed not that
long ago
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