Why was it so much harder for businessmen to accumulate insane amounts of wealth under feudalism and monarchism than with democracy?

>>17861296 (OP)
>Feudalism
There's only so much wealth you can get out of the land prior to the Industrial Revolution.
>Monarchism
The Sultan of Brunei, the Emirs of the UAE, the King of Saudi Arabia are insanely wealthy. The first is worth $30 billion, the ruling family of the UAE is worth $305 billion, the Saudi royal family is worth $1.4 trillion.

First post already basically got it. Plenty of oligarchs existed under modern monarchies, such as Cecil Rhodes, a Victorian-era businessman who literally owned the entire part of africa we now call Rhodesia. Feudalism existed before global trade, the steam engine, and industrial economies, as it was a system of necessity where slow communication and sparse rural populations required decentralized rule. It simply was not possible to build a big, global business in those days.

>>17861356
>we now call Zimbabwe
Fixed it for you. :)

>>17861365
Yeah, just pointing out that he straight up named the country after himself when he took it over with his private army.

>>17861356
>owned the entire part of africa we now call Rhodesia
But this wasn't really worth a lot back then, I mean this is just wilderness and black people, it's cool I guess but OP's pic provides a lot more direct value to that guy

>>17861382
Cecil Rhodes at one point basically owned every Diamond mine in all of Africa, which is where almost all natural diamonds come from. He founded De Beers and the diamond cartel. I'm sure he also owned a yacht and a whore.

>>17861392
What's his family like now

>>17861296 (OP)
lack of capital and lack of fiat
currency manipulations are where real money are

>>17861397
He had no kids because he was either into men or was asexual/women gave him the ick. He really had a obssession about spreading the Anglo race far and wide and constantly spoke of it.

Not really true, medieval merchants and cities grew fabulously wealthy despite the medieval custom of price caps and the robber barons. At the top were banks like the Medicis and Fuggers whomst could finance entire states and influence events.

Cities held the same status as an earl in the feudal hierarchy, they were quite large and powerful in their own right and an important source of income for their patron who would act to protect them if necessary. This probably benefited the merchants as they could start to act like minor nobility, purchasing land and hiring private armies.

>>17861296 (OP)
Depends on the taxation system. Some medieval kingdoms the king owned everything and dished out gibs, some the nobles owned everything and were able to secure wealth and their own power base.

>>17861575
>Fuggers
Ebin

>>17861525
I wonder what he'd think of how Britain developed after his time

>>17861307
>>17861356
Monarchs and Nobles got wealthy under feudalism and monarchism. Victorian era was constitutional monarchism, not monarchism proper.

So the question remains: why was it so much harder for businessmen to accumulate insane amounts of wealth under feudalism and monarchism than with democracy?

>>17861945
I'm a bit out of my element on this one, but is the answer
because real gommunism has never been tried?

>>17861296 (OP)
Marx wrote whole books on this topic
But the short answer is that it's a lot easier to get rich when you can buy elections than when your country is dominated by a landed nobility who see merchants as competition

>>17861678
He only "liked" the empire and British Southern Africa as tools and weapons to aid his business empire and nothing more.

Being richer than the king is a good way to get your entire family executed. It's not that it's impossible, but you can't flex. And that's just the nobles, for whom it wasn't always well regarded to engage in business. Bourgeois had to be wary of nobles too.

>>17862029
No, I kind of conjectured that the reason is kings and noblemen would not abide people getting filthy rich through rent-seeking without demanding increasingly large cuts.

>>17861296 (OP)
>Why was it so much harder for businessmen to accumulate insane amounts of wealth under feudalism and monarchism than with democracy?

I guess it doesn't apply because it was a democracy (of nobles) but Polish magnates during the height of the PolLithComm were as rich as kings and had so much political power, the operated their own foreign policies (resulting in Russia's "Time of Troubles").

>>17861296 (OP)
They didn't live in an era where you had publicly traded companies and a globalized digital economy of 8 billion people and numerous funds, including pension funds investing a % of tax revenue into popular companies like Amazon. The 'wealth' of Bezos and most other billionaires is just an approximation of their net worth based on the value of digital stocks, the feudal aristocracy of the middle ages had wealth tied up in physical assets and their wealth gathering were limited by geography. You still had monstrously rich businessmen like Jacob Fugger and Crassus, but just like Bezos they were the (incredibly rare) exception, not the rule.

Nothing to do with democracy, everything to do with digital currency, money being numbers on a screen and all of world's currency being accessible via a fucking app.
It's impossible to get so insanely wealthy when the wealth itself is actual coins, metal ingots, animals, produce, etc.

>>17861296 (OP)
Because the fedual lords and the monarchs would kill you if you tried that shit in their lands.

>>17861575
Yeah merchants like the Fuggers became nobility and the Medicis became heads of state, ie royalty.