Astral Codex Ten

Gilded Age

3 min read

Gilded Age

Article

Gilded Age is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 05, 2021 and August 12, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “descendants of the robber barons of the Gilded Age”; “We ended the Gilded Age fractured and alone”. It most often appears alongside A Real Dog, All Who Go Not Return, Americans.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: March 05, 2021
  • Last seen: August 12, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On Class
March 05, 2021 · Original source
Old money types like me will always have an honorary place in the upper classes but the other reason that the upper classes have opened up for the billionaires is that the traditional old money is in the process of drying up. Old money used to be defined as 19th century or earlier in origin, and was eventually opened to make way for the descendants of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. But with relatively few exceptions, it stopped opening up after that, and fortunes made in the latter half of the twentieth century really don't get you much status (look no further than Trump). Meanwhile those proper old money fortunes continue to get divided generation after generation so I guess it was inevitable that the billionaires with some decent taste would have to refresh the ranks.
Highlights From The Comments On Liberalism And Communities
August 12, 2025 · Original source
We ended the Gilded Age fractured and alone, and built up civic associational life, communitarian ideals, etc. from around 1900 to around 1960, after which all those indicators start plunging in all the charts you see everywhere today. But because we have been so focused on the last 60-odd years of data, we have missed the incredibly important context of the (titular) upswing that occurred in the first half of the 20th century in America and didn't require populism (in fact, the Populist movement in America was strongest right BEFORE the upswing began, ~1870-1900), and it was the Progressives that kicked off associational, communitarian ideals. This increase in community and togetherness was a strong trend through the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Postwar years. It wasn't costless! There were reasons people rebelled against the reigning order in the 1960s and 1970s. But every solution creates its own problems, and I think making this about Modernity and not about the last 65 years of culture obscures the contours of the issue.