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  1. The Question: Can a family successfully preserve its wealth for more than one hundred years or for at least four generations? II. The Problem: The history of long-term wealth preservation in families is a catalog of fallures epitomized by the proverb "Shirtsleeves to shirt-sleeves in three generations." III. The Theory (A) Preservation of long-term family wealth is a question of human behavior. (B) Wealth preservation is a dynamic process of group activity, or governance, that must be successfully re-energized in each successive generation to overcome the threat of entropy. (C) The assets of a family are its individual members. (D) The wealth of a family consists of the human and intellectual capital of its members. A family's financial capital is a tool to support the growth of the family's human and intellectual capital, (E) To successfully preserve its wealth, a family must form a social compact among its members reflecting its shared values, and each successive generation must reaffirm and readopt that social compact. (F) To successfully preserve its wealth, a family must agree to create a system of representative governance through which it actively practices its values. Each successive generation must reaffirm its participation in that system of governance. (G) The mission of family governance must be the enhancement of the pursuit of happiness of each individual member. This will enhance the family as a whole and further the long-term preservation of the family's wealth: its human, intellectual, and financial capital. IV. The Solution: A family can successfully preserve wealth for more than one hundred years if the system of representative governance it creates and practices is founded on a set of shared values that express that family's "differentness." V. The Practice: Families should employ multiple quantitative and, more importantly, qualitative techniques to enable them, over a long period of time, to make slightly more positive than negative decisions regarding the employment of their human, intellectual, and financial capital.

— from True North (Ethics, Integrity, Truth, Values)

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