The knowledge that failure will never make them poor. Investing to maybe reach an even more dynastic level of wealth is an entirely different game than investing to hopefully be able to pay your bills when you are too old to work.
And this very same difference applies not only to financial investment but also to how young people approach the topic of careers: with a golden spoon fat enough to feed them and their future children for the rest of their life, people can focus 100% on aiming high. In fact they even have to, because it's their only chance of ever getting any sense of personal achievement. The lower ranks however have to split their attention between big dreams and ensuring basic hirability for when the big dreams fail. This distraction alone should be enough to keep the dynastic wheel rolling.
And maybe another thought, I don't really want it to be part of my argument, because I think it is too speculative, but I think it is an interesting idea to consider: there might be a little Dunning-Kruger at work here as well. What if the most intelligent 99ers would focus the strongest on hirability/food on the table, due to being least delusional about actually making it into 1% territory? Then the only people who are both intelligent and aiming high would be golden-spooners who got lucky with both brain and parents, while their less intelligent peers would duke it out with equally not-so-intelligent risers. Certainly no rule as in "refuted by a single counterexample" (as I'm sure there are many), but maybe one of the forces at work nonetheless.
Edit: see "Edit" in
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11364978
, totally missed the part about 1% vs 0.1%. This all applies much less there, but still somewhat, because the "rich dentist" from the original article would surely be closer to middle class than to dynastic wealth in most aspects. Offspring will enter the workforce knowing that they will eventually need to put their own food on the table and personal investment strategies will still revolve around sustaining a given lifestyle until the end, not around concentrating power.
> The knowledge that failure will never make them poor.
Very insightful. This may get me pilloried in this thread, but that's the exact amount and structure of wealth that I'd like to give my kids (it will never be 0.01% level, but with the right structure, I think it's possible to provide a private "basic income" to them). I don't want them to have a golden/silver spoon, but in my own life and estate planning, an important goal for me is that I want to provide them with support, love, education, and a basic financial nut to underpin their life-nowhere near enough to do "nothing", but enough that they can take some risks and pursue what it is that they want to do, not what they must do to put food on the table and keep the lights on.
And this very same difference applies not only to financial investment but also to how young people approach the topic of careers: with a golden spoon fat enough to feed them and their future children for the rest of their life, people can focus 100% on aiming high. In fact they even have to, because it's their only chance of ever getting any sense of personal achievement. The lower ranks however have to split their attention between big dreams and ensuring basic hirability for when the big dreams fail. This distraction alone should be enough to keep the dynastic wheel rolling.
And maybe another thought, I don't really want it to be part of my argument, because I think it is too speculative, but I think it is an interesting idea to consider: there might be a little Dunning-Kruger at work here as well. What if the most intelligent 99ers would focus the strongest on hirability/food on the table, due to being least delusional about actually making it into 1% territory? Then the only people who are both intelligent and aiming high would be golden-spooners who got lucky with both brain and parents, while their less intelligent peers would duke it out with equally not-so-intelligent risers. Certainly no rule as in "refuted by a single counterexample" (as I'm sure there are many), but maybe one of the forces at work nonetheless.
Edit: see "Edit" in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11364978 , totally missed the part about 1% vs 0.1%. This all applies much less there, but still somewhat, because the "rich dentist" from the original article would surely be closer to middle class than to dynastic wealth in most aspects. Offspring will enter the workforce knowing that they will eventually need to put their own food on the table and personal investment strategies will still revolve around sustaining a given lifestyle until the end, not around concentrating power.