[HN Gopher] The Crown Estate
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The Crown Estate
Author : samizdis
Score : 27 points
Date : 2021-06-10 08:41 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dw.com)
| samizdis wrote:
| > According to the May 2021 edition of The Sunday Times Rich
| List, Queen Elizabeth II has a personal net worth of PS365m. A
| whopping PS100 million of that alone accounts for the queen's
| family's personal stamp collection, known as the Royal Philatelic
| Collection.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| It's fun to include the hypothetical market value of ones stuff
| in ones net worth. It's not particularly instructive.
|
| It would also be interesting to know HMQE2's liquid assets. It
| is all too common to be castle-rich and cash-poor.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It does get bit more interesting when the wealth has yearly
| net-cost... And really can not be liquidated. And some wealth
| brings more yearly than some other. With royalty and old
| upper-class this likely doesn't compare to more modern
| wealth.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| The Royal family and friends own greater London, probably worth
| a trillion dollars.
|
| They're not required to file deeds on the land, so nobody can
| inventory or value it with any certainty.
|
| In the private world, U2, Rush and Irwin own city-sized land
| parcels in urban areas.
| flir wrote:
| In the very first Times Rich List (1989), the Queen was at the
| top on PS5.2bn.
|
| Where has all the wealth gone? It hasn't. The Times changed the
| rules for the Queen (and only the Queen) after a nice note from
| the palace. Now, things she has full use of but can't sell
| aren't included (eg the Royal Collection).
| tim333 wrote:
| A lot of the ownership is ambiguous between the Queen
| personally and the state.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| Why are we talking about the 'Queen' like she's a private
| citizen who could cash out, and take all that money to a
| privately owned island in the Bahamas?
|
| Being 'Queen' is a job. She's effectively the CEO of a
| company (which is why it's informally called 'the firm').
| She also works hard and has worked hard as a key member of
| the firm all her life.
|
| Being upset at the Queen for being rich, is like being
| upset at the board members of an international bank. It's
| not _her_ personal money, that she can take with her if she
| stopped being the Monarch, in fact she has less of an
| option to do that.
|
| The Monarchy does so much for this country via tourism and
| and international relations, that we'd be worse off without
| them. Calculations have proven that they MAKE money for the
| country despite the huge cost in keeping the institution
| running.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > The Monarchy does so much for this country via tourism
| and and international relations, that we'd be worse off
| without them.
|
| This is the crap the royal family's press department
| churns out, to be repeated by fawning journalists
| trailing their every move.
|
| More tourists visit Paris than London. Unlike in London,
| they can go _inside_ those palaces and see the art
| collections.
|
| The presidential guards in Athens or Moscow still do a
| ridiculous dance when they change shift, and Britain
| could keep their equivalent in a republic if it's what
| tourists want to see.
|
| Republics choose who represents them. If they want a
| conman with no respect for women, they can vote for
| Trump. Britain has Prince Andrew anyway.
| throwawa162888 wrote:
| The crown estate is actually one of the only good things about
| the monarchy.
|
| I grew up in crown estate housing and it was well known to be the
| best social housing around. Much better than Peabody etc.
|
| In fact when austerity came in and they had to sell it, there
| were massive campaigns to fight it being sold off.
|
| I am a republican for the record.
| ajdlinux wrote:
| If 75% of the profits go to the government (and arguably, as long
| as the monarchy continues to exist, the other 25% covers expenses
| that the government would end up funding anyway), then doesn't
| that make the Crown Estate actually a small Sovereign Wealth Fund
| more than anything else?
|
| Lots of the media coverage around the Crown Estate seems to focus
| on the wealth of the Royal Family - if I were their PR team I'd
| be trying to push the (quasi-)SWF angle pretty hard.
| pjc50 wrote:
| It is literally a Sovereign Wealth Fund, in that it's the
| wealth of the sovereign. It's just (like a lot of things in the
| UK) not very democratically accountable.
| ajdlinux wrote:
| What does it mean for a SWF to be "democratically
| accountable"?
|
| Given SWFs generally act like other large scale institutional
| investors - I suppose democratic accountability has put
| political pressure on some SWFs to act on ESG concerns
| (changing investment strategies away from fossil fuels
| towards renewables, voting in favour of climate activist
| resolutions, etc) but apart from that, is there any reason to
| think that the Crown Estate is doing a bad job at maximising
| returns to the government?
|
| (And to be clear, though I suspect you know this - I'm not
| using the S in SWF to refer to the head of state
| specifically, but to the government, as is the traditional
| meaning)
| vasco wrote:
| The fact that over 60% of people like to live in a country where
| birth defines a family's worth as higher than everyone else is
| mind boggling. I understand at a fundamental level the worship of
| rich people, since it gives everyone something to work towards,
| "billionaires aren't so bad because I may be one some day". I
| cannot understand supporting the monarchy. Are any of the 60%
| around that could explain their thoughts? I come from a country
| with over 100 years of republic so maybe I lack perspective.
| rbirkby wrote:
| As one of the 60%, its not about deity worship, but more about
| a sense of stability. Especially where the monarchy has
| effectively zero involvement in daily life. When looked at from
| a P&L basis the crown is pretty good value. Certainly compared
| to all the alternatives that have been tried.
| noir_lord wrote:
| I'm not in the 60% but I don't care _enough_ to want to rock
| the boat either - an unelected figurehead head of state has
| some benefits.
|
| If I could snap my fingers and remove the royal family at no
| cost I would but otherwise there are bigger problems we need
| to address first.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Indeed. Replace the House of Lords with something
| proportionally elected, for example.
| tim333 wrote:
| >a country where birth defines a family's worth as higher than
| everyone else
|
| Doesn't that apply to every country on earth? Even under
| communism I imagine the offspring of the dear leaders do better
| than the average.
| anovikov wrote:
| It's not, nor it really is in the UK itself. Certainly those
| who are titled as "upper class" as accepted by their peers,
| are nearly purely hereditary, but these people don't hold the
| bulk of money even there. Most cash in UK is in the hands of
| foreigners (many naturalised), i.e. earned abroad - the
| proverbial Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs.
|
| And there's no problem about the Crown Estate. Profits from
| it go to the government, apart from the small part which is
| spent to maintain the royal household (those amounts are not
| exorbitant by any measure and it is amusing that the royals
| are able to do with so little, take literally every "person
| from TV" and they spend more). Only way in which Crown Estate
| is different from government property is that if in any case
| monarchy is abolished in the future, it will be returned to
| the royal family - now private citizens - to become their
| "normal" private property.
|
| Only bad part about UK (and European in general) culture in
| that sense is that it's incredibly hard to "make it" locally.
| Indeed, most rich people either inherited their wealth, or
| just brought it from abroad having made it there (usually in
| some dirty ways). But this is a logical consequence of
| welfare state: in Europe, we don't let anyone fall through
| the cracks, social assistance system is truly comprehensive
| and there is not so much disparity in incomes. If you don't
| have any losers, you don't have any winners either: there is
| no way to have the cake and eat it too.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > If you don't have any losers, you don't have any winners
| either: there is no way to have the cake and eat it too.
|
| The economy is not this zero-sum, fortunately.
| anovikov wrote:
| I haven't claimed it is, but see: if we make taxes high
| enough, especially progressive taxes, we avoid poverty,
| but we also prevent accumulation of wealth.
|
| If we have employment laws that make it difficult to fire
| people, we have job security, but we also don't have any
| startups (how do you hire people there if it can go bust
| and you can't easily fire them, and why would anyone go
| to work somewhere where job isn't secure while elsewhere
| it is?).
|
| There are many ways in which it works, and bottom line
| is: you either have crowds of bums, piss and shit and
| needles in the street but also ways to get rich from
| nothing if you work hard, as in the US, or you have
| neither, as in Europe. It's about choices. Letting people
| win big means making many more people lose.
|
| Cynical approach is to do business and invest money in
| the US, and live in Europe. Which is actually what i
| recommend and what i do myself. With full understanding
| that i am living in a dead end place which is about to
| become sort of a living museum already in my lifetime, a
| human zoo.
| tim333 wrote:
| During the US's best period of economic growth in the 50s
| I don't think they had the crowds of bums thing.
| anovikov wrote:
| They had ghettos of squat houses/shacks with literally
| rivers of shit, rampant prostitution and addictions, and
| gang rule though. And yes, legally and physically
| segregated.
|
| And also, back then there weren't really any startups.
|
| And they had it only because rest of the world nearly
| killed one another with US being the only country that
| managed to sit the WWII out.
| dia80 wrote:
| How would you say democracy has been performing lately in the
| English speaking world? Yes, the royal family is wealthy by
| birth but it's a tiny fraction of national wealth and the
| country gets something in return e.g. stability, some shared
| identity, soft power, tourism. I think British people mainly
| want to avoid another grubby scramble for political power by
| the unfit who then proceed to try and push ideology and fill
| their own pockets.
|
| I'll take the royals, who have been raised to have sense of
| duty and know they need to project the impression of service,
| over president Blair/Boris any day.
| becquerel wrote:
| But as a fellow Brit I there's parts of this I really can't
| understand. How could anyone not see the royals as filling
| their own pockets, given their ludicrous wealth?
|
| As for the sense of duty and noblesse oblige, well, I think
| Prince Andrew explodes a lot of those refined notions. As far
| as I know, the royal family hasn't sanctioned him in any
| serious way.
| dia80 wrote:
| By "fill their pockets" I mean actively engage in political
| corruption. The royal families relatively static wealth
| makes little difference in the grand scheme. The PS85m
| figure from the crown estate mentioned in this article is
| 0.1% of government spending.
|
| I didn't mean to suggest the royal family are unimpeachable
| beacons of virtue but that their primary motivations are
| different to politicians in a way that benefits the
| country.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _By "fill their pockets" I mean actively engage in
| political corruption._
|
| But they do. For example, the Queen used her power to get
| an exemption from transparency laws with regards to her
| own personal wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que..., and her son Charles did
| the same to ban his tenants from purchasing freeholds:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-
| charl....
| dia80 wrote:
| (replying to sibbling)
|
| By political corruption I mean activities that are
| obviously detrimental at societal level. That sucks if
| you are Charles's Tennant and you want to by the freehold
| but I'm think more of funnelling contracts to your
| unqualified friends like the PPE scandals. Again I'm not
| suggesting the royals are perfect just that the
| alternative is worse.
| mcny wrote:
| One story I remember is some corruption is okay when
| there is enough to go around.
|
| If I told you that the janitors responsible for changing
| the light bulbs didn't wait for the lights to burn out
| and replaced light bulbs with a few weeks worth of life
| left (when replacing other light bulbs) and took them
| home to use them you probably wouldn't bat an eye. It
| isn't even worth spending time thinking about it in
| developed countries.
|
| However, imagine you are in a developing country and
| corruption is rampant. I think you would justifiably be
| less charitable toward the janitor even though you know
| it is the same act but the pie is smaller so every bit
| counts.
|
| The royals being corrupt in the UK (I hope it becomes
| just England and Wales within my lifetime, preferably
| with NI and Scotland withdrawing) is ok but the royals
| being corrupt in Swaziland is a big problem.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Is not that the 60% are in favor of the monarchy; it's that the
| 60% are in favor of no change... they are conservative, and any
| significant change scares them.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| A very important, stabilising segment of every society. Don't
| know what the optimal amount is, but clearly history teaches
| us that too many or too few of such conservatives can lead to
| disaster. The British system's incredible staying power
| (especially for a country of some note, and not a tiny state
| on the periphery of history) suggests theirs is something
| like an optimal percentage.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| People who know they have no merit don't support a meritocracy.
| They like a nice hard hierarchy and a birth lottery. This is
| one of the unspoken truths of the British system.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _The fact that over 60% of people like to live in a country
| where birth defines a family 's worth as higher than everyone
| else is mind boggling._
|
| On a more uplifting note, polls indicate that this support has
| been slowly declining in recent years, particularly amongst the
| younger age groups:
| https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/0...
|
| I'm British and _not_ part of that 60%, and am fervently hoping
| this support declines more rapidly when the current monarch
| dies in the next few years or so. I think a lot of the respect
| for the monarchy here is driven by a personal respect for the
| Queen. The rest being our deep-seated cultural problem of class
| deference.
|
| My personal opinion is that in addition to abolishing the
| monarchy, the state should seize all of their private assets,
| and every member of the royal family should be exiled. This is
| probably an even less popular opinion, but I think it's the
| only proper way to rid Britain of this parasitic family.
|
| > _Are any of the 60% around that could explain their
| thoughts?_
|
| If you ask a monarchist, they'll usually lean on one of two
| arguments: the financial and the traditional.
|
| The former is the flawed belief that the monarchy is a money-
| maker for the UK and that it would be financially imprudent to
| abolish them. Usually this argument is based on the Crown
| Estate providing income for the Treasury, and the implied
| assumption that if the monarchy were abolished then that income
| would be gone, even though the lands are still there and
| there's no reason why the new republican government couldn't
| just seize the Estate as part of this abolishment. There's also
| the tourism income conjecture, but plenty of ex-monarchies have
| a strong tourism sector, and presumably there'd be a Royal
| Family Museum for tourists to visit in the new republic.
|
| The latter is driven by cultural inertia and tends to be what
| monarchists lean on when the financial argument has been
| demolished. The talking points usually revolve around who would
| be the next head of state then, how could Britain possibly
| function without the monarchy, and so on.
|
| Perhaps some monarchists would disagree with this
| characterisation of their beliefs, but having argued with many
| of them, these are my observations.
| krona wrote:
| An ancient and hereditary monarchy devoid of political power is
| the easiest way of providing an apolitical head of state.
|
| In the terms of the UK, the monarchy is interwoven with the
| national identity; it is its link to its past in human form.
| Most British people don't despise everything that has been done
| in the name of their country, and hence see the pragmatism of
| the constitutional settlement the UK landed on as the
| acceptable adjustment required to maintain something resembling
| a democracy.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Under the monarchy the UK has had peaceful transitions of power
| for 360 years. The system we have works and so most people here
| are happy with it.
|
| Alternatives like the US presidential republic system
| (currently at 0 years of peaceful transitions of power) don't
| seem more attractive to most people here.
| barrkel wrote:
| How peaceful was the transition of power in Ireland?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Under the monarchy the UK has not been attacked by trolls for
| 360 years. If we get rid of the monarchy, are we doomed to be
| invaded by trolls?
| midasuni wrote:
| " Imprisoning trolls: the rise of hate crimes in the UK and
| the increasing measures to tackle them "
|
| https://sociable.co/social-media/hatea-crimes-uk/
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If you can't measure a system of government by the relative
| peace and stability maintained while it is in place, what
| do you want to measure it by instead?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I'd attack the premise of the question. There is no
| single measure.
|
| That doesn't make peace and stability a good measure.
| North Korea has managed a few decades of that, are they
| much better governed than the USA (for all its faults)?
|
| Look closely at your measure, the UK has fought 2 Iraq
| wars, an afghan one, one in the Falklands, another in
| Yeman, Lebanon, Kosovo, Bosnia, Libya and Sierra Leone
| all on my short lifetime. So the claim UK Gov provides
| peace doesn't look great does it? Not compared to say
| Germany or France (republics).
|
| The truth is, there is no strong justification for any
| one given form of government or for the House of Windsor.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| You asked why we weren't being attacked by trolls and you
| want to attack the premise of _my_ question?
|
| I think the French have gone through five republics in
| less than the last 500 years for example if you want to
| compare to them. Also been occupied.
|
| And I'm not sure comparing to Germany is a great idea...
|
| Fundamentally the reason we have a monarchy is because
| most people like it. It reigns with consent. That's in
| extremely sharp contrast to the leaders of almost all
| other countries. 50% of Americans will by design always
| detest their president.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Hey, I just pointed out there is no hard evidence linking
| peaceful power transfer to the house of Windsor (or their
| previous equivalents). Plenty of monarchies fall apart,
| plenty of republics don't.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > peaceful transitions of power for 360 years
|
| This is a myth we like to tell ourselves, like the destroyed
| colonial records.
|
| 360 years ago is 1661. Shouldn't you count from at least 1688
| "Glorious Revolution", when the current monarchy of Dutch
| ancestry invaded?
|
| Or, if you mean the UK, count from the Act of Union 1707,
| before which the UK did not exist as such?
|
| Or, counting "peaceful", from the end of the suppression of
| the Stuart monarchy in 1746?
|
| Or, counting "UK" again, the distinctly non-peaceful
| transition of power of part of the UK to Dublin in 1922? The
| consequent violence of which only ended in 1998?
|
| (especially if you're going to try to count the US Jan 6
| incident as "not peaceful transition of power"! You have to
| overlook a lot of UK electoral violence if that's your
| threshold)
|
| The monarchy have largely managed to steer clear of this in
| the 20th century, although there was a near miss when Edward
| married a fascist spy and had to be forced out. Undoubtedly
| the influence of Prince Philip whose family were indeed
| exiled from Greece at gunpoint made a difference. The Queen
| has been _very_ cautious.
| mellosouls wrote:
| The UK-style constitutional monarchy can be argued as being in
| reality (rather than on paper) more democratic than the US-
| style republic:
|
| Although the "I may be one some day" point is true, its also
| very unrealistic to the point of being near-impossible; and in
| the UK case we aren't talking about a small percentage of the
| population (as in, eg. the US) that has the dreamed of status
| that won't ever be attained, just a handful of individuals who
| have it. That's just the ultra-billionaires and celebrities and
| doesn't take into account the clear familial traditions of
| those who are elected to run the country and their senior staff
| (Kennedys, Bushes, Trumps etc.).
|
| So its kind of comparing 10 people in the entire country (UK)
| who have a status that you know will never have vs several
| hundred (US) who have it; just the latter has a smaller-than-
| lottery (?) chance of the average Joe getting there compared to
| next-to-zero (revolution or massive constitutional change) of
| the former.
|
| Having established that the former set are "different", we then
| unify and either venerate them or revolt against them according
| to personal preference.
|
| When you then add in the regal mystique, charisma and authority
| granted to holders of office with actual power like, say, [
| _fill in your bogeyman President here_ ], having a separate
| unelected, symbolic but _powerless_ national figurehead - who
| _genuinely_ represents all of us - starts to look like a _much_
| more attractive - and democratic - proposition.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The UK-style constitutional monarchy can be argued as
| being in reality (rather than on paper) more democratic than
| the US-style republic:_
|
| I always find it amusing that 7 of the top 10 democratic
| countries are constitutional monarchies:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country
|
| More generally, it seems that countries with ceremonial heads
| of state seem to score better.
| alibarber wrote:
| I sincerley beleive that the monarchy are one of the best
| defenders _against_ the rise of nationalism in Britain, not
| just in recent times but going back to the start of Elizabeth
| 's reign.
|
| There are plenty of examples throughout history of movements
| coming to power by adopting marches, uniforms, ralies,
| ceremonies, symbols etc and co-opting them to their cause and
| calling themselves 'true patriots'. But in Britain, that's
| almost exclusively the relm of the Royal Family, so it's
| effectively impossible for any political movement to offer any
| of that in any meaningful way, because it's not really possible
| to be 'more patriotic' than the actual royal family. So yeah,
| if you want to feel patriotic you wave a flag an watch the
| queen do something quite harmless, as opposed to march with a,
| potentially quite nasty, group of politicians.
| ajdlinux wrote:
| > in Britain
|
| In Great Britain, as opposed to Northern Ireland...
| mastax wrote:
| The British Union of Fascists was quite happy to have
| uniformed marches, rallies, etc. until the Public Order Act
| 1936 banned political uniforms.
|
| Could you tie that to the royal family?
| alibarber wrote:
| Nothing in history is absolute - and the fact that the UK
| went to war against fascists shortly after that time
| probably also contributed to their demise, but actually yes
| I would consider their failure to gain a major foothold an
| example of this.
|
| I'm not saying their are no marches and uniforms at all,
| even nowadays - but that they're just going to have a
| bloody great struggle to try and upstage the ceremony and
| popularity of a Royal event - particularly if one of their
| claims is patriotism.
| dageshi wrote:
| The monarchy is an old institution, a bit like an old historic
| city, cathedral or museum. The British are very distrustful of
| knocking down old things to replace them with new because once
| they're gone they cannot be brought back instead we just
| generally tweak/evolve them to suit the modern age without
| completely replacing them.
|
| Would getting rid of the monarchy actually really change
| anything other than being change for the sake of change? Not
| really, so what would be the point?
| idownvoted wrote:
| Agree.
|
| As a German, it's cringe-worthy to me that a German state-run
| media outlet runs such a piece. The Crown Enstate Entity
| isn't "mysterious" at all if you engage with a country's
| history. But I think this is the spirit of our relations
| going forward since the Brits decided to not go with the
| program.
|
| Also: The gap in housing affordability isn't driven by a
| palace outside of London, or some sea-floor property. It is
| driven by city governments and their "Highwaymaning" via
| zoning and more.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| It could be just a coincidence that one of the most stable and
| longest democracies also has a monarchy.
| anoncake wrote:
| Probably not. Monarchies usually aren't abolished
| spontaneously but due to revolutions and similar crisis.
| Since the UK hasn't had one in a while, there just was no
| opportunity to abolish the monarchy.
|
| Also the UK has only been a democracy since 1928. A democracy
| without universal suffrage isn't one.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Yes, of course a democracy without universal suffrage can
| be one. In fact, the UK was more of a democracy before
| universal suffrage than many formally democratic states
| with universal suffrage today. This is because democracy is
| not solely, or even approximately defined by the mere act
| of casting a ballot.
| anoncake wrote:
| Of course not, universal suffrage is merely a necessary
| condition for democracy. Many formally democratic states
| of today arguably aren't democratic either.
|
| By the standards of its time, I'm sure the UK was already
| democratic back then. But not by today's.
| rbg246 wrote:
| That is such a great point about universal suffrage, a
| point completely overlooked far too often (by people
| including myself).
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