Morgan Housel

It told them what their personality could be.

It told them what they could value.

It told them who they can marry.

It told them who they can socialize with.

A lot of which was not who they actually were.

And so you had these people who would inherit the equivalent of $10 billion when they were 18.

who were basically puppets in their own life.

They were like character actors in their own life because they wanted to be somebody completely different.

Maybe they wanted to live on a farm and have a very humble life.

And the family structure said, no, you're going to live on Fifth Avenue in a 50,000 square foot house and host balls and live on your yacht and show off to other people.

That's what you have to be.

You are Vanderbilt.

You have to be that.

And the vast majority of them, I think, were miserable for it.

And it wasn't until the money was mostly exhausted that a lot of them were – that the subsequent heirs were like mercilessly let go.

Like with a sense of like they were lucky to be let go and be able to be themselves.

And this is now well-known, but one of the first Vanderbilt heirs to get to do that was Anderson Cooper.

Yeah.

Of CNN, the journalist, who was, you know, I think one of the first people in his family, which is a little bit of an exaggeration, but one of the first people in his family to get to have the privilege to be himself and live his own life and not have to live up to the title of Vanderbilt heir, even if it didn't fit his personality at all.

He wrote a book about the history of the Vanderbilts and how it fit in with other kind of robber baron families in his day.