Note the Satanism in the way Americoids deal with 'upward mobility.' They look at it at the class level. Some fools might argue peasants can be uplifted as a class, but nobody can possibly believe they can be uplifted relative to higher classes. Whether the class is 'upwardly' or 'downwardly' mobile, you're talking to a sociologist who has no idea what up and down mean. The important part is the upward mobility of particular outliers. You don't want pressure to build up.
Downward mobility of blueblood peasants will be solved by assassination one way or another. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Power is too competitive for this to be a major problem. Perhaps try to discourage using them as puppets, because lies are bad mmmkay.
Apparently ironically but of course not ironic at all, the middle ages were better about this. Lowborn nobles could move up in life, but it was very difficult to move far. If they wanted more, it was a multigenerational project. "Your father was an X," tells us what mean your children are likely to regress to. There's no point in giving a chandler's son a county, even if he can handle it, because the chandler's grandsons will be chandlers. Keeping the class mobility to one rank limits social disruption after the family loses their position again. Likewise there were several non-hereditary titles which could be used for extreme outliers.
Seems to me succession has been solved by Capitalism. Issue stocks on the estate, and have a private offering, specifically to your children. Whoever can afford the most stocks can buy out his siblings. Gives 'em something to do before they can inherit. Also encourages dad to step down before senescence makes him step down. Mainly, the dud sons can't possibly keep the estate, but they get a consolation prize and aren't rewarded for patricide and fratricide.
Keeps the wealth concentrated as well a la primogeniture. The only problem I could see off the cuff is this might cause a race to the bottom, via outside financing. Promising the bank a bigger and bigger slice of the pie in exchange for bidding assistance.
ReplyDeleteThis is an improvement from the status quo, where the banks have everyone's pie for free.
ReplyDeleteIf one of your siblings is dumb enough to take out such a fooling nonproductive loan, then you simply take the bank's money, wait for him to go bankrupt, and buy the estate back from him. The bank and your sibling sharing the haircut. Sadly banks, like all criminals, seem pretty stupid, so the threat of this risk very plausibly won't stop them from offering the loan in the first place.
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