Jay Hughes is the best read and most cultured and probably the wisest of those writing about wealth in families. He has taken certain concepts (such as human flourishing and systems of governance) from political and moral philosophy, along with sources in psychology, religion, and literature to create both a vision and a methodology for perpetuating dynastic families. The truth is that this is an aristocratic vision going all the way back, and honorably so, to Aristotle's Ethics and Politics. What Jay helps wealthy families see is that their success is not just perpetuating the family wealth, but optimizing the family's lived life, their human potential, or human capital. So he talks in terms of developing each family member as a family asset. This means nurturing and cultivating human excellence, productivity, virtue, and wisdom. It also means, I would imagine, getting Junior elected to the Senate, and having Sister run the Family-Owned Bank, and Uncle run the NY Times, and so on, so that the family weaves itself into the power centers of our society in such a way as to become puissant and indomitable. From family, to clan, to dynasty. Aristocracy at its best works like that. At its worst such a system devolves into an Oligarchy, or Plutocracy. And in the ambit of these increasingly concentrated and interwoven power systems comes putsch, silent takeover, gilded lies backed by force, or Tyranny.
My question is this: Can we replant Jay's insights back into their native soil, that of the theory and practice of a just society? Can we ask what it would take not just for some disproportionately wealthy families to flourish, but what it would take for all families to flourish, whether they wear shirtsleeves or ermine?
I would like to hear Jay connect dynastic, aristocratic, 100 year families with themes like democracy, social justice, and happiness or human flourishing for all, or for the greatest number. I do not think that can be done unless words like obligation or public service or stewardship are introduced. Phrases like "the responsibilities of wealth." I note that Jay does not use such phrases, much or at all. His words are about the service of the faithful servant to those in power. He almost seems fulfilled by the very act of prostrating himself at his client's feet. (He speaks metaphorically at one point about sleeping as a trusted advisor curled up at the foot of his master's bed, a role taken from the concept of fealty to noble families in a monarchy.) Very little is said about the service of those who have the most to those who have the least. That is a political, moral, and spiritual obligation, it seems to me, and must be bred in the bone and beaten into the backsides and thick heads of our upstart-aristocrats or what we will have is plutocracy or worse.
If the goal is widespread human flourishing, up and down the social hierarchy, and if philanthropy, and personal leadership, and public service, are among the levers, and if social investing or mission aligned investing, and local organizing, and political action of informed citizens are among the levers, then we finally have a topic comprehensive enough to offer potential solutions. Few in philanthropy or philanthropic consulting think at this altitude, or even try. We drill deep in our silos (this one an expert on giving, that one an expert on media reform, this one an expert on nonprofit law, that one an expert on public policy around charter schools, that one an expert on investments, or social investments, or metrics, and so on) So, we lack a conceptual framework for seeing how these elements fit in a sustainable society in which all might flourish.
With Catherine Austin Fitts I am trading ideas on mission investing, centered on not only giving but also on economic returns, and also on spiritual and humane social capital widely dispersed. I have learned from Jay how to make life just grand for the wealthiest families, "lest they go from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations." (Becoming in the process much like you or me, as horrifying as that might seem to our dynastic clients.) From Catherine, I am a learning how ordinary people can prosper, even when their efforts are sabotaged by those in high places (be they dynasts or parvenus) who have every advantage, including wealth, political power, secrecy and sometime access to illicit force, and who may act as parasites, or tapeworms, upon or within the body politic, flourishing at our expense.
My point, please, is not to enforce a conclusion in this post. What I am trying to flag for my fellow advisors to wealth and my fellow citizens is that we are at risk in this tottering democracy of making too much of the wealthy and their well-being, and their flourishing. Let us turn our thoughts to how all may flourish and let us ask in that context whether an increasingly separate class of well-fed, well-educated, flourishing, often complacent wealthy people, organized in interwoven family dynasties, or clans, operating often behind the scenes, is in our national interest. If not, why are we working as advisors so hard to create this?
Caveat: Of course, it matters whether the "dynasty" an advisor seeks to preserve is a restaurant owning family in Smallville, a farm in Nebraska, a locally owned bank in Canton, or a multi-billion dollar family firm with tentacles in think tanks, media, politics and the like. If we are to build and preserve thriving dynasties, I hope they are small, local, and community-spirited. To that effort I lend, and Catherine, I believe, would lend a willing hand. And in fact while that (the world of small town entrepreneurial families) is not Jay's world, it is the world of most wealth advisors and attorneys who read his work. Philanthropy embedded in community, responsive to ethical, humane, spiritual and democratic traditions, in which families give back to help others flourish as they have flourished; well, that is part of the good life in a just society. That is maybe how Aristotle translates in a Constitutional Republic in which we all have an equal right to the pursuit of happiness, or human flourishing, in our families great and small, whether in pinstripes or work-shirts. It would also be interesting to hear from Bill Schambra on such themes.
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