Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Ying and the Yang

The Ying and the Yang

Secondly, Old Money fears war. Actually they have some Love/Hate mixed together regarding this particular State of Nature. Obviously they fear losing a war and having all their wealth taken away by an invading army, however, as I’ll explain, there’s more to it than that.

In the bible the Jews are defeated and carried off into captivity. It is bad enough to have son’s killed, daughters raped and a great city come toppling down. Even worse must have been having all that wealth carried off and then having to go to work for a bunch of unwashed barbarians. Still, you have to give the Children of Israel credit. They sucked it up and found a way to make the most of a bad situation. They took their natural talent for finance and trade and learned to create economic empires in the geography in which they found themselves. You have to hand it to the Zionists; they are a creative, hardworking and persistent bunch. They were brought low by War and prospered despite having their country invaded, made slaves and exploited for their talents.

I won’t waste my reader’s time with further examples of nations falling in war and their wealth confiscated by the Invaders. There was the Trojan War, The Peloponnesian War, Hannibal, the barbarians descending on the Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Mongol Invasion of Europe, European wars too numerous to mention, The American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Global War on Terror. I mention these in case anyone has forgotten that war is a great redistributor of wealth. If one cannot compete with neighbors economically there is always the option to descend with an organized hoard and take their wealth by force of arms.

So war is a mixed bag for Old Money interests. On one hand they see it as an opportunity to get even richer, if their backers are victorious, but also as a possibly loss of their treasure if luck goes against them. President Eisenhower (Anyone Remember Him?) warned us about the “Military Industrial Complex.” This is often controlled by Aristocratic interests but there is plenty of Upper Class money that gets doubled down on when the United States goes to war. So we have the Old money getting richer and new money jumping on the bandwagon.

Old Money is very pragmatic when it comes to war and politics. It's all business. When in doubt they support both sides. Once the outcome is decided they use their influence with the victors to exploit the misfortune of the losers. For example gaining control of aspirin and other pharmaceutical patents from the Germans following WW2. For example using their political power after an election, regardless of who takes office, to promote their special interests.

Most of the wars we have been involved in since the end of WW 2 were not life threatening in a Nationalistic Sense but they were an opportunity to get the blast furnace of the economy revving and the economic rewards were felt by everyone, even trickling down to the lower classes. As a result, if your son or daughter didn't get killed or maimed, war was a good thing for monied families… “Ahhhh yes!” you point out. “… But people with money these days, in the Upper Middle, and Old Money classes no longer send their offspring off to War.” The answer is of course they don’t. It’s human nature, and in the long term, a huge mistake.

Another aspect of war that the Aristocrats find troubling is that while they make plenty of money so does another class that they prefer not thinking about. The Upper middle class also profits, not just from investing in mutual funds and stocks but also from the host of innovation that develops concurrently with armed conflict. There are a host of examples I could name but let me cut to the chase and point to the Internet that was a Department of Defense initiative. This technology was an unintended consequence of the Cold War and it really changed the status quo and ushered in the age of real time news reporting. People discovered what was happening as it happened and no longer was government able to hide the many gaffs that showed how truly incompetent social enterprise often is. On the One Hand Old Money acquired more wealth and on the other had to contend with the increasing transparency of events.

Thus as an unintended consequence to war, those behind the scenes, quietly pulling the strings, are ‘oft confronted with a whole new set of changing conditions. The status quo is thrown into disarray and Old Money must adjust to the times. This is what I'm really talking about when I say that Old Money is afraid of war. If they lose a war, some of their wealth is confiscated. If they win the technologies that emerge can be an even greater threat to their affluence and power.