Posted by There’s a series of passages in Arthur C. Clarke’s classic sci-fi novel, Rendezvous with Rama where he talks about humanity’s reaction to its first encounter with an extraterrestrial object – a long, smooth cylinder traveling harmlessly through space, which passes by the Earth on its way to some other destination.
Essentially the world decays into chaos for the better part of a few hundred years. Economies collapse, governments fall. The psychic shock to humanity’s psyche leaves us weakened and grasping for air.
If we could explore this world up close, what’s would be telling is the example of those who sidestep the whips and scorns of the ensuing centuries. Whose families endure and survive and thrive during the long, slow decline. The ability of certain people to thrive in the darking hours of the night when all others are falling about is fascinating to me. Some of them will have thrived by having been born from the previously wealthy. Those smart enough or lucky enough to be able to preserve generational wealth and hand it down until such time as it does finally run out or the world emerges from the doldrums.
But there are also those who rise to prominence and power amid the discord. Who make their fortunes, and fortunes indeed they can be, off the slim pickings of humanity’s lean years.
During the Gold Rush, the people who grew the richest weren’t necessarily hunched-back panhandlers working the claims. Instead, those who supplied the miners with their pick-axes and shovels and pans grew rich; as well as trousers. Ever heard of Levi Strauss?
In 1853, Strauss moved to San Francisco, opening a dry goods wholesale business as Levi Strauss & Co. and imported fine dry goods—clothing, bedding, combs, purses, handkerchiefs—from his brothers in New York. With a business partner, he eventually began producing blue jeans, a new style of riveted denim work pants which he sold to the panhandlers of the California Gold Rush. The rest is history.
There are lots of other examples of people who rise to prominence in hard-scrabble times. Andrew Carnegie’s example springs to mind. But because of his Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie gave it all away. His descendants are doing well but there is no generational wealth to support them. Most American examples are too new to have had significant multi-generational transfers. One maybe two or so. I’m curious as to very long-term old-money but I can’t think of examples of a family being wealth over several centuries or even a millennia (outside Royal families). Do they exist? Or are the fortunes of the industrialists bound to run out within a generation or two.
On the surface, the dilettante children of Conrad Hilton might lead one to believe so. However, according to an exhaustive Google search which involved one click, Paris actually averages $10,000,000 in salary and has a product empire including 44 stores which sell her handbags, perfumes and other products as well as various media and online projects.
Yes, I did just go from Andrew Carnegie to Paris Hilton. Her example is telling because of its diversification. Although one’s ancestors may have created vast wealth in one industry, the digital age and fickle nature of global capitalism almost demands that those who make their wealth in this new era do so from a strategy of multiple income streams. It’s all good and well to study one field in college. Daktars still do pretty well. But for the rest of us, it bodes ill to specialize. I’m just learning this lesson myself. Create several types of businesses so that if/when one fails, the others will pick you up.
