From City AM: That is an extraordinary thought, one that embodies the beauty and extreme stability of the [royal family]. Nobody else does succession planning and long-termism this brilliantly; one of the monarchy's least well-understood but most important side-effects is that its survival helps ensure the protection of private property and hence capitalism. Nope. The royal family has nothing to do with "capitalism" (in the sense of private enterprise, free markets etc), never has done, never will, they are merely the poster children for Home-Owner-Ism (or neo-feudalism). [At this stage we could do a compare and contrast between North Korea, which has a fairly long-lived hereditary presidency and no capitalism, and China, which is nominally Communist and seems to be quite good at capitalism]. The Home-Owner-Ist system has very little respect for "private property" whatsoever, hence and why it is considered acceptable for The Powers That Be (politicians, landowners, bankers, royal family, quangocrats and other welfare leeches) to help themselves to half of your earned income in tax. The Home-Owner-Ist system doesn't even respect "public property" (the rental value of land), so The Powers That Be help themselves to large chunks of that as well.