
Robber barons bought dozens of medieval European buildings – where are they now? - samclemens
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-the-early-1900s-dozens-of-centuriesold-european-buildings-came-to-america-where-is-medieval-america-now
======
nemo
Hearst's papers were one of the chief propaganda outlets deceiving the
American public into the Spanish American War. After he got his war he turned
to pillaging Spanish cultural treasures and justified it as a jobs program.
Wow.

~~~
nostrademons
It's funny - in a historical context - to see Travis Kalanick called "One of
the most ethically challenged men in Silicon Valley", read about Vinod Khosla
getting roasted for closing his private beach, or watch Paul Graham get
skewered for arguing that unionized industries ought to be disrupted by
startups on Twitter. Compared to Gilded Age magnates, pretty much everyone in
the tech industry is a saint.

Other choice deeds of Gilded Age personalities: Jay Gould would manipulate the
stock market at will, tried to corner the market in Gold, and installed his
cronies in the New York government in exchange for directorships in his
railroads [1]. Leland Stanford supported immigration restrictions on Chinese
in his role as governor, and simultaneously employed thousands of them working
in near-slave conditions on the railroad [2]. Henry Clay Frick hired an armed
militia to disperse striking workers, which led to an actual firefight between
them and the picket line [3].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike)

~~~
gozo
So? That seems more like a reason to question the people that wields power
more than anything. What's dangerous with "startup royalty" is that they have
a following while they are almost never challenged on what they really know.
Rarely do we see them answer tough questions, respond in debates or anything
else that would rapidly demonstrate the limits of their knowledge. Of course
Paul Graham can complain about unions because he will never have to explain or
stand for what he means in any meaningful sense of the words. Not even
politicians can get away with that. It's like the worst form of meritocracy,
the one that coined the phrase, when your merit is unrelated to your power.
Our world is being formed by hunches.

~~~
nostrademons
That's the nature of power. Decisions always flow _down_ a power hierarchy,
but accurate information rarely flows _upwards_ , as everyone providing
information to the decision-maker wants to make sure that it'll influence the
decision in a way favorable to themselves. As a result, the leader of any
large organization is usually the least informed person in the organization.

There's not actually a way to fix this - you aren't going to get rid of the
concept of power itself. If you try to "educate" decision-makers, you're just
contributing to the problem: all you do is replace the slice of reality that
was contributed by someone else wanting to influence them with the slice of
reality that _you_ want to influence them with, and then someone else can get
mad. It's up to the decision-maker herself to seek out accurate, independent,
non-biased information, because most information volunteered to them will be
biased. I think many of the "tech elite" actually do this - it's to their
advantage, after all, since what they don't know will lead to them being
replaced by a new elite. Indeed, the problem is somewhat self-correcting: as
old elites become progressively more powerful and less informed, smart &
hungry technocrats start looking at them as rubes to take advantage of, and
they end up being replaced by people with a more accurate conception of
reality.

My point is just that objectively speaking, power hierarchies seem a lot
flatter now than they did in the late 19th centuries. Nobody has died yet
because a tech startup founder hired an armed militia. Investors today
_complain_ about how they influence the market and buy software to minimize
that influence, they don't actively try to corner or manipulate it (well,
outside of Bitcoin and Porsche). The Vinod Khosla flap would barely have made
the news 100 years ago, he would've hired armed guards to keep the surfers out
and that would've been the end of it. We've made progress, as a society, in
the last 150 years: it's slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

------
simonw
This was absolutely fascinating. If you haven't been, I thoroughly recommend
taking a trip to Hearst Castle (a lovely drive down the pacific coast highway)
which is a monument to bought/stolen European antiquities.

------
iamthepieman
For the not quite so insanely wealthy there was always the option to construct
a building that only looked like it had been imported from europe[1] See just
below the first picture of the actual castle in that link.

I visited the Hammond castle two summers ago and it's exactly what you would
expect from a millionaire playboy inventor. Parts of it look like something
from a steampunk convention.

[1][http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-
cas...](http://www.travelswithnathaniel.com/2012/07/tour-hammond-castle-
museum-in.html)

~~~
myNXTact
Ha ha Tonka state park in southern Missouri is an example of rich man building
his own
castle.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Ha_Tonka_State_Park)

------
strictnein
Off topic, but in the book Snow Crash, weren't the Japanese doing this with
prestigious colleges and the like? Moving them brick by brick to Japan? Or was
that a completely different book?

~~~
dredmorbius
That doesn't ring any bells to me as a plot element from _Snow Crash_.

There was Reverend Bob Rife's aircraft carrier, but that's the only re-
appropriated artifact I recall.

~~~
fit2rule
I seem to remember a few bridges being cyberpunked.

------
zach
And here I thought this only happened in _Gargoyles_. Cultural appropriation
has never since been this visceral.

I was fascinated by the description of 10,000+ pieces of a monastery in a
warehouse. It seems like such a perfect problem for modern technology. If
anyone has any such stories of ruins being reconstructed in computers, please
share.

~~~
Qworg
After spending some time in Turkey, I'm fascinated by this problem as well.
I've not seen anything though.

My thought is scan all of the rubble and have the computer attempt a best fit.

~~~
Someone
That has been attempted for a Roman world map. See
[http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html](http://formaurbis.stanford.edu/docs/FURdb.html),
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forma_Urbis_Romae)
(unfortunately, most of that map likely is lost forever, so it's
reconstruction will remain fragmentary)

"computer reconstruction of pottery" also gives several papers on the subject.

------
PeterWhittaker
Odd article, would benefit from the word "American" at the beginning of the
headline: It concerns buildings moved from Europe to the US in the 19thC and
early 20thC by fantastically wealthy Americans.

~~~
ogreveins
Honest question, were there robber barons besides the famous ones in the US?

~~~
danielvf
Oh yes. The term came from the late Middle Ages when some people with a castle
and soldiers were essentially thieves with open power and quasi legal cover.
Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron)

The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took
protection money from ships. I had ancestors who lived in Central Europe who
lived near enough to a robber baron. From time to time, the baron's men would
ride out from their castle and steal everything they could carry from
neighboring villages.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Their primary income was what they took, not taxes from lands they ruled.

> The Rhine river hills are covered with the castles of robber barons who took
> protection money from ships.

How exactly does this differ from "taxing"?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
You get something back from taxes - things like health care (in Europe at
least), infrastructure, R&D investment, education, and so on.

Political systems that don't have proper checks and balances always devolve to
caste banditry - which is not quite the same thing as getting something useful
for your money.

~~~
thaumasiotes
This does not reflect any understanding of taxes before, say, the 19th or 20th
century.

Hammurabi certainly didn't devote his funds to public health care or public
education. Infrastructure, yes. R&D... probably not. Monuments, public
religion, and the military would have figured in his budget.

What you get back from taxes is stability. If robber barons kept ships from
being attacked (other than by themselves) along their stretch of the river,
they were fulfilling the necessary function of a taxing agent.

