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

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    151·
    12 hours ago

    To be fair, the crown’s only “worth” is as a collectable.

    It’s not equivalent to, say, 750,000,000 kg of Nutella. E.g £5 billion of Nutella. You can’t just sell it and distribute the Nutella, it has to be manufactured for £billions worth of work.

    The crown has no utility. Its gems don’t do anything productive, relative to their value. It can’t pay engineers and farmers and such wages to make Nutella, because what are they gonna do with 1/10,000th of a crown?

    Practically, if the UK govt sold all royal stuff, what would happen is some ultra-rich would buy it, and… sit on it, at the expense of other collectables they’d have bought instead. That doesn’t improve much.

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
      7·
      10 hours ago

      It’s also worth noting that the crown jewels do serve a beneficial public service in that they form part of the monetary guarantee for UK currency - the same role as the gold reserves. While not nearly as important after the broad adoption of fiat currency over the gold standard it’s still an important aspect of a nation’s monetary sovereignty. Tacky as fuck yes, but they’re not just tacky as fuck. And definitely far more useful for the country than the actual monarch wearing them.