From Patrons to Plutocrats: Why Superyachts are the New Cathedrals

In our historic past, the ultrawealthy invested in public goods. Today, billionaires buy superyachts to escape public duties. It raises an urgent but unanswered question: what are the ultrarich for?

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“The super-rich are so unequal and exceed and overcome the others regarding their political power so much that it is reasonable to think that they are among the others as God is among men…The cities which are governed democratically, should relegate these people, should send them into exile or banish them…”

— Nicole Oresme, late 14th Century philosopher

This week, some inexperienced twenty-something year-old lackeys of an overconfident, unelected supervillain billionaire (who dabbles in Nazi salutes) gained illegal access to the financial systems of the most powerful government in the world.

The unelected billionaire’s quest, despite being the richest man in the world—capable of lifting millions out of poverty or funding generations of medical research with a flick of his pen—is not kind, but callous. He aims to slash public spending for the destitute and the desperate. His crosshairs are centered on delivering a kill shot to USAID, revealing the disturbing fact that the richest man in the world is using his illegitimate and illegal power to snatch emergency food and lifesaving medicines from the world’s poorest people.

Then, to add the extra grotesque flourish to an already ghoulish act, he took to the communications network that he bought for $44,000,000,000, to boast about his newfound powers—smugly proud of his efforts to harm the world’s most vulnerable people, all while his various stock holdings relentlessly add zeroes.

Such appalling, gleeful cruelty is the culmination of social shifts that have been centuries in the making, the degradation and desecration of a longstanding social contract that emerged in the wake of the 14th century Black Death. For, as we will see, the ultrawealthy were not always social vampires, eager to suck the lifeblood of society’s weakest members solely for their private gain. But many modern billionaires do have a seemingly unquenchable thirst for draining society, all so they can add another helipad to their superyacht.

This unfortunate fact raises a simple, profound question—one that is rarely openly discussed in modern life:

What are the ultrarich for?

Across the centuries—until recently—there was a firm answer. It was long expected that with great wealth came great responsibility. The superrich had duties to society, not out of the goodness of their hearts or through optional charity, but as a basic requirement.

Intolerable inequality was somewhat mitigated by the archetype of the public patron, the obligation of converting private wealth to shared civic investments. (These days, it’s too often the inverse, as Musk uses vast sums of taxpayer money to bolster his business empires, converting civic investments into private wealth).

But for centuries, from cathedrals to Caravaggios, many of the ultrarich spent their money on public spaces and culture—much of which is still visible today, the lingering legacy of their investments. (Where are the modern cathedrals of Amazon? If they exist, you wouldn’t want to visit them).

Beyond patrons, medieval and Renaissance society created an imperfect pact with those who accumulated extreme wealth.

As the economic historian Guido Alfani chronicles in As Gods Among Men: A History of the Rich in the West, the ultrawealthy were expected to act like a barn for money. They were given tacit approval to store cash well beyond others in society, but with a crucial catch. Just as a barn can store grain to prepare for famine, the wealthy could store riches to prepare for social upheaval. And when calamity came—as it inevitably would—society’s most affluent were expected to open the barn doors, let the money flow out, and stave off disaster for all, not just themselves.

The superrich were never angels, but if they failed to fulfil that duty, the state or powerful religious institutions could and would coerce them; there were plenty of carrots for the rich as part of the social bargain, but the stick was never far away.¹

In 1908, the writer G.K. Chesterton observed that “The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.”

We have moved from public patrons to private plutocrats, budding oligarchs who drain wealth, evade taxes, and torch society while developing their own escape options. For some, it’s a self-sufficient ranch teeming with off-the-grid generators ready to whir to life; for others, it’s a superyacht, prepared to sail indefinitely across the rising seas when social collapse becomes annoyingly unpleasant. For the unelected Tesla Tyrant who now ostensibly governs America by illegal whim, the escape option is more ambitious, as he ponders rocketing into the heavens.

For the rest of us, though, Chesterton’s quip is apt. We have a stake in society. There is no escape — and we would rather not see our own world burn.

How did we, the teeming, hardworking billions, allow ourselves to become the victims of a few narcissistic plutocratic vultures? And how can we learn lessons from history about better models for a social contract that only tolerates extreme wealth accumulation when it yields pragmatic value to serve the public good, rather than living through a seemingly relentless slurping sound, the horrifying soundtrack as the marrow of society gets sucked out before being converted into the carbon fiber shell of yet another $500 million boat?

From Aquinas to Andreessen