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Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

The Chinese have a saying: 富不過三代 / "wealth does not survive three generations"

In the case of the Chinese that might also have been caused in the past by communists taking over the country and nationalizing everything or by people from up-North invading and making themselves rulers.

Things are much more stable in Europe, not to mention the US. The Nazis were, generally speaking, quite friendly towards accumulated wealth (unless you were a Jew, of course), and in case of Britain the last major "all of your accumulated stuff is ours"-thingie happened after the Norman invasion, almost 1,000 years ago.

Yeah or maybe the chinese have thousands of years of history and that saying doesn't come from the last 100 years.

On average, there has been a massively destructive war or peasants revolt or foreign invasion every three or four generations, down through the ages of Chinese history. But I'm sure it is the same sentiment as the Dutch expression I remember from a couple of Dan Carlin podcasts, about ascending the stairs in wooden clogs, and descending them in silken slippers. The idea of a cycle where hard work leads to prosperity, leading to decadence, leading to ruin, seemingly crosses all times and cultures.

That's patently false by what seems to be a factor of at least four. It it were merely three or four generations, dynastic change should be every ~100-120 years, however the average seems many times that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynasties_in_Chinese_history

Not every massively destructive revolt, invasion or war directly overthrew a dynasty, but the history is littered with revolts and incursions from the steppes, even during some of the strongest dynasties. The Tang and Qing dynasties were able to stagger through and survive two of the most destructive wars in human history, the An Lushan and Taiping Rebellions, respectively, which killed tens of millions and devastated huge swathes of the countryside, as two examples.

I of course know that, just wanted to say that a saying it's just a saying, nothing more. You can think that all is nice and stable and then a guy like Mao and his army comes along and all the sayings attached to the old order of things don't mean anything anymore.

Wouldn't a guy like Mao coming along render this saying even more true? But to be clear, the saying has nothing to do with government seizure or anything like that - it's about the nature of mankind.

Judging by the difficulty of maintaining an estate, I suspect you are wrong about Britain.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_country_house...

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