The Unfunded Liability of Elite Luxury
Monday Memo: July 13, AD2026
Welcome to the Monday Memo, where I explore the world’s enduring dynamics; grounded in first principles, philosophy, character, and statecraft, rather than passing fads.
The French celebrate/remember/lament Bastille Day tomorrow. This occasion is always one of unique reflection for me as an American scholar as the French Revolution is linked to the American Revolution and yet so very different. It has many more shades of gray, but where it is black and white, the contrast is stark.
The American Revolution may have been inevitable in the sense that some sort of constitutional showdown would have to occur between the colonies and parliament, especially as the colonies steadily increased in population relative to the mother country. They could not indefinitely maintain the old English constitution in the colonies, and the imperial aspirations of parliament in one empire, without either one beating the other or a rupture. They chose rupture. France was different. The French are always different.
France needed reform not revolution. The problem was a failure of means and will. But first, let’s spin the globe backwards two thousand years or more.
In 215 BC, the Second Punic War against the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal threatened the survival of Rome. The Roman Republic passed an emergency measure called the Oppian Law to restrict public displays of wealth by women. This law was strict. It capped the amount of gold a woman could own, banned purple fits, or rather garments, and outlawed women riding in horse-drawn carriages within the city—except for religious festivals—to ensure all resources went toward the national security crisis. Two decades later, after Rome had won the war and was vastly wealthier, a crowd of women flooded the streets of the city demanding repeal of the Lex Oppia. This uproar prompted a debate where the losing side made points that still matter even if at the time they tried to apply them to the wrong situation.
Prudence should govern how principles dictate policy.
When the Roman Consul Cato the Elder defended keeping the Lex Oppia in 195 BC, the immediate issue at hand was women demanding the right to wear gold and purple. However, the subtext was Roman values against the structural misallocation of a society’s resources. When wealth is concentrated in non-productive, competitive ostentation, it drains the resources necessary to sustain roads, legions, and the public good. Cato feared that these things would undermine the Roman virtues of self-control and discipline. Fair enough so far as it goes, however he had the wrong target; Roman women were not the origin or principal cause for concern for those problems. Cato lost the debate and the law was repealed because the emergency was over and there was no reason to deny Roman women their ability to style and adorn themselves in a patriarchal society where they were denied other means of honoring themselves, which was the argument of the Tribune, Lucius Valerius that helped bend the government toward the women’s plight.
A critical distinction exists between the treats and benefits of a prosperous society and the pathology of luxuria, the insatiable desire for extravagance and excess where elites hoard resources and a political economy separates having wealth from public obligations. It is opposite of the Roman virtues of frugality and thrift. Cato had a good principle and a wrong application.
Going back to the 18th century, there was a cost of forgetting the link between means and obligation. In the divergent paths of eighteenth-century France and Britain the relationship between their crowns and nobles tells the story. The British nobility was taxed. Their French rivals had some of best tax exemption plans in history. As a result, when Britain faced crises it not only had a sophisticated banking system, but it could also make long-term fiscal plans for taxing of the wealthiest men in the kingdom. France, not so much.
An absolute monarchy that barely taxed the nobles could not compete with a limited monarchy that could put its hands on cash in a hurry. France did not have to go through a revolution; it needed to learn the lesson of the Roman Republic and the British aristocracy: wealth that cannot be put to the use of society when it is needed is ultimately an unsound investment because if the society goes down all the protections required by wealth evaporate with it. Romans knew that if the Carthaginians sacked Rome, they would carry all the wealth away they could carry. Better to beat them and kick them out of Italy. The British realized that it was better to share the financial burden of the state if that was what it took to share political power with the Crown. But when France faced the crises of the late 1780s the fiscal house was a mess and public order itself became an unfunded liability.
When a political elite finds itself in a big mess, the solution will often be expensive, and they have to choose whether or not to pay the cost of cleaning it up or the cost of failing to do so.
But the cost will be paid. Either to the women of the forum or to the poissardes, the women fishmongers of Paris who on October 5th, 1789, marched on Versailles to demand the king return to Paris and do his job.