Broke aristocrats are a trope. Broke billionaires are an oxymoron.

Just looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_by_net_worth I don't see a lot of hereditary names. There is the Mars family I suppose. I don't see names like Getty, Bruce, Mellon, Carnegie, Rockefeller or Vanderblit. There is a Hunt.

The wealth doesn't look like it accretes faster than family growth divides it at that level.

Leaving aside George Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford, and a few other aristocrats, the latest-born of the descendants of Cornelius Vanderbilt is James Vanderbilt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Vanderbilt), currently worth by somebody's estimate $20M. The family also includes Anderson Cooper, a fair stock of earls and such, and a number of artists.

> I don't see a lot of hereditary names

1. There's a very specific reason for that: the computer revolution and the monopolies created by it.

Wait a few years to see what happens to teh children of the people on that list.

2. Look at the Waltons -- The only reason Bezos is the richest person in the word is because the waltons share the inherited wealth between them.

Look at a list of families, for a more accurate view of the Aristocracy:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/070116/top-25...

Most of these are ~100 years old.

Walton, Koch, Cargill-MacMillan, Cox, SC Johnson, (Edward) Johnson, Hearst

All but 5 of those families have less wealth than MacKenzie Scott; whose claim to fame is marrying the son of a bike shop owner.

The odds of breaking in to that list are something like 1 / 300,000,000 but evidence is anyone can do it. MacKenzie is also my subtle counterargument to "Look at the Waltons". Breaking up the wealth ain't always voluntary.

*grandson of one of the first nuclear engineers and nephew of one of the most successful musicians of the 20th century, whose parents had nearly a million (2020) dollars to spare to help him get in on the dotcom boom. But anyway.

Those are about the same odds as breaking in to the House of Lords.

Would the explanation that "while it is statistically impossible, it is strictly speaking plausible for an extremely devoted and lucky regular person to join the club" be a good enough excuse for re-introducing a landed aristocracy to American government, in your estimation?

I just remember when I was school in the 60's there were a lot of games played where one person out of 30 would 'win'. Very much like professional sports. Talked to my dad whose much older. He said they didn't do that when he was a kid. I think schools don't do that shit as much because they realize that one kid has a very temporary positive experience and 29 kids have a negative one.

Seems to me where the system is fair is unimportant, first we know it's not. Second is it designed to create disparities and a negative experience for most people. From a societal point of view that probably bad. And as I like say, the needs and wants of a couple of super wealthy people shouldn't be anything society cares about.

> 1. There's a very specific reason for that: the computer revolution and the monopolies created by it.

This is called recency bias. "This time is different." as opposed to all the other times they said "This time is different."

> There's a very specific reason for that: the computer revolution and the monopolies created by it.

200 years ago> There's a very specific reason for that: the cotton revolution and the monopolies created by it.

150 years ago> There's a very specific reason for that: the industrial revolution and the monopolies created by it.

100 years ago> There's a very specific reason for that: the oil revolution and the monopolies created by it.

Etc.

Yes and what happened every time in between? Significant civil unrest or wars. The first and second world wars actually acted as great equalizers (as did the civil war, the French revolution etc.) everytime after a new "aristocracy" develops and tries to keep keep the wealth to themselves. So I guess we need another upheaval, is that the argument?

Last I checked, WWI and WWII didn't take place nor start in the US. Keep reaching.

> The pearl has just begun to be produced. Do you think that the kids of the current top billionaires will not be at least middling billionaires? ... The US has lower social mobility than most European countries. Considering the fact that Europe is part of the "Old World", that's a worrying fact in my opinion.

I'm not sure that this is actually true, wrt. "old" wealth. Mostly, because Europe's high income taxes and broadly business-hostile environment makes it very hard for new wealth to compete with old wealth, and especially unattractive for "old" wealth to get involved in riskier, more innovative ventures of their own as opposed to just kicking the can down the generational road.