Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tsimionescu | Hacker News Reader

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This is ignoring all of the details. Feudal peasants were much closer to slaves than to citizens in a democracy. They had a duty to produce certain amounts of resources for the lord - often not a percentage like a tax, but a minimum amount due. In many places at many times, they were bound to the land - they were not allowed to move away from the village where they lived, definitely not to a different Lord's lands. As you also note, they had no power to influence decision making, and even if they did rise up, they were violently put down, by neighboring lords if they somehow were successful against their own.

Not to mention, (modern) states offer much more than military security. They offer healthcare, food, care for the disabled, infrastructure, education, and many other services. And, especially in smaller nations or at local levels (think town, not US state), there is quite a lot of real democratic power, certainly incomparable to the realities of serfdom.

Look, I’m not making an argument in favor of serfdom (far from it). I’m pointing out that many current iterations of democracy have become quite corrupt, so much so that the difference between it and feudalism is one measured on the margins (your details). Every couple days an article gets upvoted on this website that describes how the economies in (western) democracies have metastasized to the point where it’s participants are just cogs, working for a massive corporate enterprise that explicitly does not care about them, voting in elections about a government that quite often does the opposite of what is in their expressed interests, and/or are stuck in an infinite loop of debt-enabled credentialism.

Okay yeah that’s not de jure feudalism. Inching closer and closer to de facto, though.

Edit: to say this again, because apparently it’s needed. I am not in favor of feudalism.

But still lightyears off. You are dramatizing our priviledged existence. Billions (literal) would offer their firstborn son to be "cogs" working a "massive corporate enterprise". What you are describing is the good part of modern life, I suggest you don't look at the bad parts if this already disturbs your soul.

I didn't take your comments as being in favor of feudalism, I took it as being a bit too cynical of modern states. The clarifications in your new comment make it clearer that you are more talking about a direction, not saying we already live in neo-feudalism, and I agree with you completely that it is something we're inching towards.

Thanks, and yes I should’ve been more clear about my intent. I am a defender of democracy, and what I said should’ve been better placed in the context of what I actually mean. Namely, the decay of competency and the corruption we see in many democracies will drift to a point where the situations of their citizens start to mimic or echo a version of feudalism.

> This is ignoring all of the details. Feudal peasants were much closer to slaves than to citizens in a democracy.

I disagree. We overestimate the freedom we have and underestimate theirs.

For example they had much more free time than we do today. We on the other hand are still "free" to choose where to work (as long as we aren't in poverty, which is unfortunately untrue for too many, with no prospect of future change), but the workplace is as undemocratic as it gets.

Forget our (tech) golden workplaces. Most people spend 2/3 of their lives in authoritarian workplaces that they can't leave because they need their shit job to survive.

Where is the practical difference with being a serf?

Even in the west, most of us don't live a democracy, except for the minority of their time.

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