And I watched a video yesterday that perfectly encapsulated everything that is wrong with Britain. The whole thing. A lifetime of systemic failure, of grotesque inequality, of ruling-class contempt disguised as concern, all of it distilled into a single glittering, nauseating image.
There he was. King Charles III. Dressed in his finest robes, the Imperial State Crown on his head (this is a solid gold construction studded with 2,868 diamonds, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 269 pearls, and four rubies). The Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross contains the largest clear-cut diamond in the world, weighing in at 530 carats…was present but not in the shot. The crown jewels are estimated to be worth up to $8 billion in total. And this man, wearing a hat that could solve homelessness in London, who holds a stick that could fund the NHS for a year, draped in robes worth more than most people will earn in a thousand lifetimes, was telling the British people to ‘weather the storm’ of the cost of living crisis.
Crosspost from https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11612563
It’s not about numbers, it’s about people. You are correct, booting the royals out of their palaces and turning it into housing would not solve the entirety of the UK’s homeless problem, and while I’m guess you made up the percentage, housing for 6950 people currently unhoused or insecure living conditions is a better use of the buildings, which already exist. The royals also have multigenerational wealth that isn’t tied to stolen items you could transfer to agencies that serve the unhoused, build new developments. Even if didn’t use this moment to overthrow the entire capitalist system (which is unlikely) that wealth could be used to help the impoverished take steps within that system to get affordable housing.
And yes, wether symbolic monarchists holding on to the spoils of the previous centuries or the post-industrial/digital revolution corporatists that have risen in the last couple, the wealthy should be afraid that at some point the bulk of society is going to come kicking down the doors of their palaces, mansions, penthouses, and maybe even engage in a bit of piracy when they flee to their super yachts to reappropriate their estates for distribution to the masses. The world doesn’t need kings and billionaires.
It’s never worked in the past. When it gets to this point it’s the end of the country at we know it.
Redistributing mansions and boats won’t fix the homeless program either.
All or nothing thinking results in self-sabotage before an attempt is made. There’s no single “do this, solve a housing crisis” magic button, even a well laid plan is going to run into unforeseen problems.
Yeah, abolishing the vestiges of the monarchy would be the end of the country as you’ve known it. But it’s not like England is a monolith that’s been the same thing for centuries. The country people lived in after WW2 was not the country they lived in before WW2. Same for the post Victorian era, same for when they lost the colonies, same for when the Magna Carta was written, same for when William conquered. Societies change. We’ve got similar problems in the States. We’re not the country we were when the Constitution was first written, nor the country that split over slavery, nor the industrial titan of WW2 and the post war boom, nor the wealth gap growth of the Regan era. Were the inheritors of those legacies but we can either do nothing and let the conservatives hold us back, or worse, let the regressives cherry pick the worst moments in history and try to recreate them, or push for progress even at the expense of disrupting what is comfortably familiar and tolerable.
Very well said! Bravo/brava!