Lee Jae-yong

I hope we have this graphic that you inherited or you put up on your article calling it the inheritocracy.

You have, here it is, Fox is going to Lachlan Murdoch, Comcast, Brian Roberts, Samsung, Lee Jae-yong, and it goes on and on, not to mention Trump and the Trump sons.

What's the deal with this? Has it always been the case that just the kids of these billionaires inherit everything their parents built?

We've always had inheritances.

That means that 50% of the value of assets goes to the government when they're passed from one generation to the next.

Therefore, if Lee Kun-hee, for example, passed $5 billion in shares to his son, Lee Jae-yong, the heir would have to find some two and a half billion dollars to pay the government, which he likely could only do by selling two and a half billion dollars worth of shares, therefore losing the voting power that they bestow.

This hypothetical started to feel far more concrete in May of 2014 due to this, the heart attack of Lee Kun-hee.

The chairman survived, but only barely.

It was an open secret among South Korea's powerbrokers that Choi, despite holding no official position in Park's government, exerted deep influence over the president's decision-making, even to the extent of picking out outfits, editing speeches, and making specific policy propositions.

On the surface, Choi worked as the owner of an Italian restaurant in Seoul's ritzy Gangnam neighborhood, but politicians and businesspeople were often seen walking up to the third floor to her office, where she solicited donations for two nonprofits she had set up, the Mir and K-Sports Foundations, supposedly dealing with cultural exchanges and sports-related projects, but in practice acting as the top of the funnel in a complex, globe-spanning money-laundering scheme.

Samsung, at the direction of Lee Jae-yong, donated a combined $36 million to Choi's foundations, and while still little is known about the specific inner workings, soon after, the state pension fund voted in favor of C&T and Choi's merger, the measure passed, the two companies combined, and the Lee family shored up control of the Samsung empire into the next generation.

Of course, we now know about this.