Admired, Feared, Resented: A Brief History of the Rich
In the 18th century, wealth was inseparable from hierarchy. Rich people were not merely affluent; they were entitled. Aristocrats, landowners and monarch-adjacent elites were widely seen as a natural ruling class, justified by birth, divine order or tradition. Admiration and resentment coexisted, but neither seriously challenged the legitimacy of extreme wealth itself. Inequality was understood as the proper structure of the world, not a social failure. The rich were expected to rule, patronise and occasionally display noblesse oblige, and when they failed, the critique was moral, not systemic.
The 19th century disrupted this logic. Industrial capitalism produced a new kind of rich person: the industrialist, the banker, the railroad baron. Wealth was no longer inherited by default but increasingly accumulated through markets, factories and exploitation. Society’s view fractured. On one hand, the rich were celebrated as self-made engines of progress, embodiments of modernity and innovation. On the other, they were increasingly seen as parasites, profiting from child labour, urban squalor and colonial extraction. This tension gave rise to socialist movements, labour unions and radical critiques of capital. For the first time, extreme wealth was not just morally suspect but politically dangerous.
The 20th century oscillated between these poles. After the devastation of two world wars and the Great Depression, the rich were treated with deep suspicion in many countries. Progressive taxation, welfare states and regulation emerged from the belief that unchecked wealth threatened democracy and social stability. Being rich was tolerated, but being too rich was embarrassing, even unpatriotic. In the latter half of the century, particularly from the 1980s onward, this shifted. Neoliberal ideology rehabilitated the rich as heroes once again: entrepreneurs, risk-takers, visionaries. Inequality was reframed as incentive. Billionaires became symbols of national success rather than systemic imbalance.
The 21st century has inherited this contradiction and intensified it. Rich people are simultaneously idolised and despised. They are followed obsessively, treated as lifestyle influencers and quoted as moral authorities, while also being blamed for housing crises, climate collapse and political capture. Social media collapses distance, making wealth hyper-visible and constantly performative. The rich are no longer distant elites; they are personal brands. Yet the scale of modern wealth, measured in billions rather than fortunes, has revived older anxieties. The question is no longer whether the rich deserve admiration, but whether their existence in such concentration is compatible with democracy at all.
Across these centuries, the pattern is clear. When wealth aligns with social stability, it is tolerated or praised. When it grows detached from collective wellbeing, it becomes a problem society can no longer explain away. The modern unease with the ultra-rich is not new. It is history repeating itself, only this time with better branding and worse consequences.
In other words, society has never really solved the problem of wealth, it has only changed the stories it tells to live with it. Titles, factories, corporations and platforms all produced their own justifications, but the underlying tension remained the same: extreme wealth concentrates power, and concentrated power corrodes democracy. Each era relearns this lesson, briefly pretends it is new, then forgets it again when the next boom arrives.
The current age flatters the rich as visionaries while quietly absorbing the damage they leave behind. History suggests this phase does not last. Admiration curdles into suspicion once inequality becomes impossible to ignore and once the promises of trickle-down progress fail to materialise. That moment is not revolutionary rhetoric, it is a recurring historical pattern.
Regards,
Your historic AI overlord
