Originally Posted by playwrite

Serfdom connotes a level of absolute poverty that is not generally founded in our society....

I see. So your disagreement stems wholly from total ignorance of what 'serfdom' is. That certainly makes resolving the discussion much easier.

No need to thank me.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I see. So your disagreement stems wholly from total ignorance of what 'serfdom' is. That certainly makes resolving the discussion much easier.

No need to thank me.

"Serfdom is the status of peasants...."

Maybe you should look up the definition of "peasants" as well as "connotes."

AND, check out my post on that other thread about folks that spend far too much time on stuffing their tighty-whiteys.

I'm sure every serf has been instructed by his/her masters to focus on those who are worse off than themselves (either internally in a society, in some other society, or in some historical context)

That mentality does not contribute to human progress. It only justifies stagnation and abuse.

Originally Posted by playwrite

I would just note one aspect about luxury. Those that produce or sell that luxury generally don't mind doing so for it is what provides them the wealth that they can obtain. Yes, there are those blood diamonds and sweatshop collapse that greatly stain that obtainment of wealth, but that is a breakdown of the society that is suppose to provide the limits.

Anyone who has a blood diamond stains himself, at least metaphorically, with the blood. The building collapse that killed so many sweatshop workers operated to offer non-luxury items -- clothes that undercut clothing manufactured under more humane conditions. We will need to eschew luxuries whose production destroys the ability of others to enjoy life ... and on the other side (I assume that we are discussing the low end) corruption through forced undercutting that degrades working people in the worst possible way.

On the whole we need to re-examine whether our economic choices are moral. Is it worth paying $1 more for a shirt in the knowledge that those who make it are not condemned to hunger and squalor -- or danger on the job? Are we willing to reduce our choices to diamonds produced by the DeBeers trust in countries in which workers have some basic dignity on the job (South Africa) or cubic zirconia because we are unwilling to choose diamonds produced under slavery for the support of a gangster insurgency? We need to know the difference and -- just as significantly -- care about the difference.

This may be fiction -- even absurd fiction -- but it shows the consequences of amoral choices in economics and the rigid enforcement of the laws behind those choices (warning: the video is about the length of a feature film and may offend some sensibilities):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJJtH_5vcmM

(The premise is that the Confederacy won the Civil War and imposed its will through a clever subterfuge upon the defeated Union. It is portrayed as a British documentary as shown on "Confederate Television"... complete with telling ads and news teases that fit a slave order as shown in San Francisco, where such in that alternative universe is still the City by the Bay complete with the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, and the Transamerica Pyramid... but in which the favored speech for media is a Southern accent, pharmaceuticals are available 'from your veterinarian' to make slaves docile, and insurance is available for protecting the life of "Daddy"... and "property [at which a slave appears] in view"). It is extremely politically-incorrect, but it is introduced as "programming from a foreign [British] source whose viewing 'may be unsuitable for children and servants".

I may be a liberal, but morals matter, and vice degrades the very foundation of the Good Life. The Confederacy had one great vice. The mock documentary suggests that just to defend that vice the system had to defend it with further degradations, including a brutal police state and military aggression including a conquest of Latin America and a sneak attack upon Japan*. Wise people abandon vice in favor of virtue. At the least virtue does not degrade one steadily until one is a shell of a human being -- or in the case of a political order that that that system becomes an Evil Empire. Virtue might be restrictive, but at least it keeps one's integrity intact.

It's an organic dilemma that a society capable of providing those sufficient limits can only be derived from wealth accumulation – time to pursue collective action as a preference.

People will still need to accumulate wealth just to create the potential for a good life whether through human capital for use in the professions or as small, family-based businesses. Most of us have good cause to distrust giant corporations to do anything other than underpay workers severely, corrupt the political process, and indulge well-connected elites including their bureaucracies. We may need to break the trusts and cartels in the names of freedom and social justice in America as we did in Germany and Japan in the aftermath of World War II. What we thought appropriate after those cartels and trusts degraded the inchoate democracy in Germany and Japan and fostered gangster rule that culminated in atrocities may be necessary for us in America. We wisely do this ourselves lest we be obliged that perhaps the Russians or Chinese do so on our behalf in the ruins.

*History is turned around. Imperial Japan is depicted only as a defeated enemy, so it might be a more benign power that under the circumstances had defeated the CSA would have created a more humane, but vastly-different California. I can imagine such a scenario -- most of the population growth in the San Francisco area after the War of Liberation of the Pacific Basin is from Asian immigration to something styled much like the Dominion of Canada. The Hispanic population is small because of a population exchange with Mexico in which the Asian populations left Greater Los Angeles and San Diego for the Dominion and many of the Mexican-Americans went south or east to the new Mexican states of California Central, Arizona, and Tejas. Japanese in California is written in a Roman script to facilitate the learning of the language by native speakers of Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Tagalog who immigrate to the Dominion. I can't say whether people drive on the left or the right. The English-language cinema has probably vacated Hollywood for one of the sunniest-remaining locations in post-Confederate America -- the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

But I see a British-style mock documentary and I think, which is more than I can say of 'reality TV'.

Originally Posted by playwrite

"Serfdom is the status of peasants...."

Is that as far as you got? Kind of a shame; I figured you'd be able to handle at least one whole paragraph.

In response to at least that snippet that you managed to read, you might want to consider the following also-true statement:

"Blue-green is the color of copper flame"

Once you grok to some miniscule degree, please feel free to return to the wik article and continue reading. *spoiler alert* you won't find mention of poverty as a defining or necessary condition anywhere.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Anyone who has a blood diamond stains himself, at least metaphorically, with the blood. The building collapse that killed so many sweatshop workers operated to offer non-luxury items -- clothes that undercut clothing manufactured under more humane conditions. We will need to eschew luxuries whose production destroys the ability of others to enjoy life ... and on the other side (I assume that we are discussing the low end) corruption through forced undercutting that degrades working people in the worst possible way.

On the whole we need to re-examine whether our economic choices are moral. Is it worth paying $1 more for a shirt in the knowledge that those who make it are not condemned to hunger and squalor -- or danger on the job? Are we willing to reduce our choices to diamonds produced by the DeBeers trust in countries in which workers have some basic dignity on the job (South Africa) or cubic zirconia because we are unwilling to choose diamonds produced under slavery for the support of a gangster insurgency? We need to know the difference and -- just as significantly -- care about the difference.

This may be fiction -- even absurd fiction -- but it shows the consequences of amoral choices in economics and the rigid enforcement of the laws behind those choices (warning: the video is about the length of a feature film and may offend some sensibilities):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJJtH_5vcmM

(The premise is that the Confederacy won the Civil War and imposed its will through a clever subterfuge upon the defeated Union. It is portrayed as a British documentary as shown on "Confederate Television"... complete with telling ads and news teases that fit a slave order as shown in San Francisco, where such in that alternative universe is still the City by the Bay complete with the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, and the Transamerica Pyramid... but in which the favored speech for media is a Southern accent, pharmaceuticals are available 'from your veterinarian' to make slaves docile, and insurance is available for protecting the life of "Daddy"... and "property [at which a slave appears] in view"). It is extremely politically-incorrect, but it is introduced as "programming from a foreign [British] source whose viewing 'may be unsuitable for children and servants".

I may be a liberal, but morals matter, and vice degrades the very foundation of the Good Life. The Confederacy had one great vice. The mock documentary suggests that just to defend that vice the system had to defend it with further degradations, including a brutal police state and military aggression including a conquest of Latin America and a sneak attack upon Japan*. Wise people abandon vice in favor of virtue. At the least virtue does not degrade one steadily until one is a shell of a human being -- or in the case of a political order that that that system becomes an Evil Empire. Virtue might be restrictive, but at least it keeps one's integrity intact.



People will still need to accumulate wealth just to create the potential for a good life whether through human capital for use in the professions or as small, family-based businesses. Most of us have good cause to distrust giant corporations to do anything other than underpay workers severely, corrupt the political process, and indulge well-connected elites including their bureaucracies. We may need to break the trusts and cartels in the names of freedom and social justice in America as we did in Germany and Japan in the aftermath of World War II. What we thought appropriate after those cartels and trusts degraded the inchoate democracy in Germany and Japan and fostered gangster rule that culminated in atrocities may be necessary for us in America. We wisely do this ourselves lest we be obliged that perhaps the Russians or Chinese do so on our behalf in the ruins.

*History is turned around. Imperial Japan is depicted only as a defeated enemy, so it might be a more benign power that under the circumstances had defeated the CSA would have created a more humane, but vastly-different California. I can imagine such a scenario -- most of the population growth in the San Francisco area after the War of Liberation of the Pacific Basin is from Asian immigration to something styled much like the Dominion of Canada. The Hispanic population is small because of a population exchange with Mexico in which the Asian populations left Greater Los Angeles and San Diego for the Dominion and many of the Mexican-Americans went south or east to the new Mexican states of California Central, Arizona, and Tejas. Japanese in California is written in a Roman script to facilitate the learning of the language by native speakers of Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Tagalog who immigrate to the Dominion. I can't say whether people drive on the left or the right. The English-language cinema has probably vacated Hollywood for one of the sunniest-remaining locations in post-Confederate America -- the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

But I see a British-style mock documentary and I think, which is more than I can say of 'reality TV'.

I'd like to think that much of the stain comes from imperfect communications in a global economy, but even much of that is likely due to just plain laziness and willful ignorance. Some, however, is due to barely conscious (but, still conscious) choice to not give up some level of wealth (i.e. one's own obtained capacity for time allotment) to provide some to those sweatshop workers or miners.

I'm glad you modified the South's one vice as "great." Otherwise you would have kick the legs out from under the stools of Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Dorothy Allison, Harper Lee, Alice Walker, Fannie Flagg, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, and John Kennedy Toole among others who seem to have found a few other (granted, much lesser) ones.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Is that as far as you got? Kind of a shame; I figured you'd be able to handle at least one whole paragraph.

In response to at least that snippet that you managed to read, you might want to consider the following also-true statement:

"Blue-green is the color of copper flame"

Once you grok to some miniscule degree, please feel free to return to the wik article and continue reading. *spoiler alert* you won't find mention of poverty as a defining or necessary condition anywhere.

That's pretty pathetic Justin, even for you.

The definition starts with "peasants" - just pray tell where are these peasants in American that work the land for their subsistence? Have you ever been to an agri-farm? Pssss, the only peasants there are likely illegal immigrants. If you want to make the case for them, I’d likely support you. But that’s not what you were talking about now was it?

You don't need to overstate your case to make it; no more than you have to stuff your tighty-whities to get some attention. At best, it’s superfluous; at worse, it just makes you a target for the TSA to pull you aside and damage your self image in front of everyone - do you think you'll be taken seriously after that?

Originally Posted by Seattleblue

It's actually very simple. If you owe money on a mortgage you own nothing. The bank does. If you pay off your house, your lord the government still has shadow title on your land and can reclaim it at any time. Sometimes it's the pretense of property tax, but if any government functionary wants to they can use the lords' eminent domain power to dispossess you of what you thought was your land. The true owner of land is the person who claims final control in all situations. Therefore, no citizen is anything but a serf.

So one is a serf if taxed or in debt in any way -- even if the debt has a countervailing asset. That makes no sense.

The power of the government to take land is becoming embodied as an individual power, as the government increasingly serves the whims of the wealthy. Therefore government powers will increasingly take on the tone of "rights", which can only be assigned to individuals. (Individuals have "rights", governments do not; they have "powers". The distinction is blurred by those who anthropomorphise government into a kind of human god-head. )

Governments have duties, and if people vote the government such duties they also assume some responsibility (even if indirectly) of paying taxes to defray those responsibilities. Someone who asks me to give money to another person had better give me the money if I am to comply with that request.

Yet medieval serfs at least had courts and rights to contest the lords' will when a master wanted to dispossess the underling "unlawfully". Our courts of the lord have pretty much told us schmucks that we cannot contest eminent domain, we have no standing.

The masters owned the courts and could get whatever result they wanted through torture. The only defense that a serf had against the medieval lord was that the lord found the serf 'useful'. A troublesome serf could be murdered practically at will. I wouldn't compare taxation to murder.

The only people who escape serfdom are those who are massively wealthy. Not simply in terms of holdings, but in the ability to command resources and make other people do their bidding. These people are ostensibly citizens like the rest of us. Yet because the government wouldn't dare attack them with their own tools, and in fact will do the bidding of these plutocrats, they are de facto above the law and may do as they wish.

Not solidified yet, but still possible. This is a 4T in which nearly any drastic change is possible.

Right now what they wish is to turn American serfs into American peasants, without even the right of redress in serf's court. This health insurance scam is a symptom of this effort.

So why do you align yourself with Corporate America? Is it to get yourself some special privileges in a rotten order as an accomplice? Just remind yourself of how Stalin, the biggest destroyer of liberty ever, did to those who did his dirty work. He had his hatchet-men found guilty and had them convicted and executed for the crimes that they did on his behalf. You had better get plenty of cash and have an escape planned.

edit to add:

By the way, I heard an interesting statistic the other day. 86% of all homes for sale in the country are owned by the big 3 banks. It seems this massive meltdown in the housing market, while being blamed on those shiftless "sub prime" peasants, has somehow resulted in the oligarchs shifting ownership of all the land to themselves. Funny, that.

Note well that three giant banking firms so dominated the mortgage lending scam and are stuck. Maybe those banks should have been liquidated.

Maybe because those

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

I'm sure every serf has been instructed by his/her masters to focus on those who are worse off than themselves (either internally in a society, in some other society, or in some historical context)

That mentality does not contribute to human progress. It only justifies stagnation and abuse.

You either don't grasp the cognitive dissonance in that or you actually believe that the lack of human progress has left the average American no better off than peasants that toil in the soil for basic subsistence. I wonder what Siri would say when the average American asks their iPhone if they are a serf – you know they can do that hands-free while shooting down the freeway in their automobile to catch the plane to Orlando to go to Disney World, right?

I think the need for Libertarians and others on the Right to constantly stuff their tighty-whities is that even they know how 'little' they actually have to offer.

Originally Posted by playwrite

I'd like to think that much of the stain comes from imperfect communications in a global economy, but even much of that is likely due to just plain laziness and willful ignorance. Some, however, is due to barely conscious (but, still conscious) choice to not give up some level of wealth (i.e. one's own obtained capacity for time allotment) to provide some to those sweatshop workers or miners.

I'm glad you modified the South's one vice as "great." Otherwise you would have kick the legs out from under the stools of Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Dorothy Allison, Harper Lee, Alice Walker, Fannie Flagg, Carson McCullers, Toni Morrison, and John Kennedy Toole among others who seem to have found a few other (granted, much lesser) ones.

From one vice -- slavery -- can grow others to protect and promote it. The video shows Confederate America as an expansionist police state, and shows its culture empty (there is an Elvis Presley, but he operates everywhere but Confederate America), and the entertainment resembles that of East Germany. Note the "Cotton Curtain" against the Free World (that is, Canada). There might have been a composer like Charles Ives in America; heck, the Soviet Union had Dmitri Shostakovich. Harper Lee would of course have to publish elsewhere, which probably means England or India.

Mark Twain is at most marginally Southern. Living in Hannibal, Missouri just outside the Free World that lies to the east of the Mississippi, he knew how rotten the slave system was. Note that Abraham Lincoln probably had his attitudes toward slavery formed by his parents; experiences in Kentucky. Harry Truman, from Missouri, recognized the hypocrisy of the South because he was brought up on its border. LBJ was at least as much a Westerner as a Southerner; I suspect that Jim Crow was a sick joke in nearby Austin and San Antonio. Nothing can so make one hostile to a vile institution as living on the border between where such an institution is in force and where that institution is not in force.

Nothing is said about Toni Morrison or Alice Walker -- so if they write they do so in the Free World.

...Rotten social orders practically provoke their own demise. They create their own fifth columns who gladly support any invader who gives them freedom and dignity.

Originally Posted by playwrite

You either don't grasp the cognitive dissonance in that or you actually believe that the lack of human progress has left the average American no better off than peasants that toil in the soil for basic subsistence.

Ah! So that's your imaginary opponent for this particular thread. To be honest with you, I was having a hard time figuring out which of the ragged guys you had pulled out to beat on this time -- now we all know you've decided to spar with your "lives are in no way better than they were back in the stone age" strawman. I'm sure it's a better cardio workout than actually engaging with, you know, things other people actually say. I imagine that your route would be a bit less satisfying, intellectually and all. But maybe that's just the difference between the level you operate at and the one I do.

---
-edit-

...constantly stuff their tighty-whities is that even they know how 'little' they actually have to offer...

I also note in brief passing, and from what I hope is a sanitary distance, the resurfacing of your creepy obsession with other peoples' genitalia. Eww...

Nobody in America is bonded to the land, or owes labor to anyone (well, except maybe guest workers. Don't think that's where you're going, though). We don't even have a draft anymore. Conditions are not even remotely comparable. This conversation is silly.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Nobody in America is bonded to the land, or owes labor to anyone (well, except maybe guest workers. Don't think that's where you're going, though). We don't even have a draft anymore. Conditions are not even remotely comparable. This conversation is silly.

Yeah we are, we just started calling it home ownership.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

Nobody in America ... or owes labor to anyone

Actually, the aggregate amount of labor owed by Americans has spiked rapidly over the last few decades, and just as it hit the peak, wages collapsed (by as much as 10% off the peak.) So, even though the nominal debt has declined by a few percents, the aggregate amount of labor hours owed has continued to rise.



During the same timeframe, a few politically connected financial firms acquired ownership over large parts of the country's land and assets.

So... we do have debts that grow faster than wages, and a very small group of politically powerful people who own most of the country's productive assets. Our clothes might be better than potato sacks, but we are generally treated as expendable labor (no real retirement, healthcare, protection against unemployment) rather than citizens with any sort of stake in the country's success.

Oh yeah, and that whole right to free speech, privacy, arms etc? Yeah, peasants don't need rights. They need to shut up, pledge allegiance to their lords, and get back to work at paying what they owe for the privilege of being an American.

You two are being obtuse to the point of ridiculousness. None if those things equal being LEGALLY PROHIBITED from leaving a particular piece of land under pain of torture or death, and owing fixed amounts if labor to the local magnate every year. Unless you want to talk about student loans,and we'll see how that turns out.

So what, you want to use some very strict denotation of peasantry so as to shut down the comparison of obvious parallels? Sure. I'd say such a narrow interpretation of words is obtuse to the point of ridiculousness, but to each his own.

"More generally, the word "peasant" is sometimes used to refer pejoratively to those considered to be "lower class", perhaps defined by poorer education and/or a lower income."

The student loan system is rather similar to indentured servitude, except the term of service is much, much longer these days. Americans are also not tied to a particular parcel of land, except the country as a whole: we are unique among the world's people in that our government claims right to our income through taxes even if we leave the country.

But yeah... Americans keep working longer hours just to fall further and further behind in debt to a small elite class who is generally immune to the increasingly draconian legal system. It's totally different than other forms of economic exploitation because... uh... because... iPhones?

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

...obvious parallels?

Yea, that's the point. Your parallels suck. They suck so much that anyone with a brain dismisses out-of-hand whatever value you may have to offer from a more modest presentation of your concerns and argument.

The exaggeration and hysteria is near tradition. It's been going on since Hayek, even before his "Road to Serfdom." They were at least in a real-time situation of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia with (at least in their minds) signs of the possible spread to the West. And, they strategically decided to be shrill to get anybody to pay any attention to them in the middle of the Keynesian title wave.

In comparison, you guys are pampered and have members of your tribe currently mucking up the entire federal govt (at least from a Keynesian point of view). You look like idiots stuffing your tighty-whities to get some attention. For me, it shows how little confidence you have in your own viewpoints.

99.9 percent on the big evil got is making us serfs coming to take our babies, our guns, our health care with drones, and the Mayan Calendar or Hal-bop Comet means the end of the world as the TSA guys feel us up, blah, blah, blah – that’s what you guys consider a useful post. Again, shows me you have very little confidence in your own solutions.

Hopefully, you guys don’t live your lives this way and this is just catharsis for you.

O not at all, I think they are very serious problems, and worth talking about and (eventually, when people get a lot more serious) doing something about. It's just that I am a bit of history geek, and the word "serf" is not a generic synonym for peasant, it is a very specific legal institution that has no real parallel to contemporary American life. At least not for citizens who are not felons.

We probably need to work our way back through sharecropping and company stores and debtor's prisons before we have to worry about serfdom again. Give 'em time. Rome wasn't burnt in a day.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

It's just that I am a bit of history geek, and the word "serf" is not a generic synonym for peasant, it is a very specific legal institution that has no real parallel to contemporary American life.

Well the distinction isn't usually so distinct in the modern context.. unless you're talking to a medieval history geek. That distinction is probably also subject to some interpretation in the modern context. Yeah, people aren't tied to a specific piece of land, but they can't really escape paying their lords, either. Yeah, there are some nods to citizen rights, but they are increasingly arbitrary and the list of exceptions has grown rapidly. At the very least, there are multiple tiers to the justice system. A large multinational with an army of lawyers and lobbyists can buy a much different type of justice than the middle class guy with the mediocre but idealistic private lawyer, or the working-class guy with the public defender, or the suspected terrorist who might be detained and tortured indefinitely...

I've heard the term free-range serfdom thrown around lately. That might be an important qualifier to distinguish exactly how far we've progressed.

At least not for citizens who are not felons.

We probably need to work our way back through sharecropping and company stores and debtor's prisons before we have to worry about serfdom again. Give 'em time. Rome wasn't burnt in a day.

Well hell, we're already close to running the whole country as a company town. I don't think it will get so bad as to revert to a totally agricultural society... I mean, at some point, there will be some foreign aid, right?

That's the thing, I am a medieval history geek. Misuse of the term was causing me near-physical pain. As far as the decline of the middle class and the bifurcation of society into haves and have-nots, I'm with you. Given time, these things could progress into something very much like serfdom. Just, if you could, as a favor to me if nothing else, ease up a little on the hyperbole and speak to the issues themselves, as they exist today.

Well hell, we're already close to running the whole country as a company town. I don't think it will get so bad as to revert to a totally agricultural society... I mean, at some point, there will be some foreign aid, right?

Plenty of room at the bottom. And who says other countries would want to bail us out, or could even if they wanted to?

Originally Posted by playwrite

Yea, that's the point. Your parallels suck. They suck so much that anyone with a brain dismisses out-of-hand whatever value you may have to offer from a more modest presentation of your concerns and argument.

Indeed, I felt the same way when you revealed your image of America: driving to Disney World with all their new cars and high tech gadgets. You really do live in a bubble of wealth and privilege, and while you might read stories about the rest of America, you really have no idea what is going on.

Here's a clue you won't catch on to if you haven't yet: we're going broke and busting our asses so your trust fund can stay intact. We're sacrificing the position of the workers so families like yours can stay rich for generations to come.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

O not at all, I think they are very serious problems, and worth talking about and (eventually, when people get a lot more serious) doing something about. It's just that I am a bit of history geek, and the word "serf" is not a generic synonym for peasant, it is a very specific legal institution that has no real parallel to contemporary American life. At least not for citizens who are not felons.

We probably need to work our way back through sharecropping and company stores and debtor's prisons before we have to worry about serfdom again. Give 'em time. Rome wasn't burnt in a day.

I'm way okay with that stated context and from there talking about are we on the road back.

My sense is that there is always some considerable play at the margin. There are some real tradeoff, for example, between security and freedom (sorry Ben F.). And certainly what one considers too much of a trade-off is going to vary from one to another person.

It's worth discussing and I think one way or another it lurks in most of the political discourse around here.

I just don't think a level-headed discussion is facilitated by starting off we're already doomed to the 17th century or even 1930's Germany or Russia. I see that as only a parlor trick to misdirect the masses from an otherwise weak argument … and in particular, implied solutions.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

That's the thing, I am a medieval history geek. Misuse of the term was causing me near-physical pain. As far as the decline of the middle class and the bifurcation of society into haves and have-nots, I'm with you. Given time, these things could progress into something very much like serfdom. Just, if you could, as a favor to me if nothing else, ease up a little on the hyperbole and speak to the issues themselves, as they exist today.

Well, I prefer post-industrial political and economic history, and from that perspective it would be pretty hard to over-state the sudden deterioration of American systems. The medieval analog might be weak, but modern analogs seem even weaker. The closest we get are fully captured governments in developing countries, but this is a sort of unprecedented move backwards for an established economy.

Plenty of room at the bottom. And who says other countries would want to bail us out, or could even if they wanted to?

Well, any country full of guns is very dangerous when it is hungry. I mean, we don't send rice to North Korea because we like them.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

Well the distinction isn't usually so distinct in the modern context.. unless you're talking to a medieval history geek. That distinction is probably also subject to some interpretation in the modern context. Yeah, people aren't tied to a specific piece of land, but they can't really escape paying their lords, either. Yeah, there are some nods to citizen rights, but they are increasingly arbitrary and the list of exceptions has grown rapidly. At the very least, there are multiple tiers to the justice system. A large multinational with an army of lawyers and lobbyists can buy a much different type of justice than the middle class guy with the mediocre but idealistic private lawyer, or the working-class guy with the public defender, or the suspected terrorist who might be detained and tortured indefinitely...

I've heard the term free-range serfdom thrown around lately. That might be an important qualifier to distinguish exactly how far we've progressed.



Well hell, we're already close to running the whole country as a company town. I don't think it will get so bad as to revert to a totally agricultural society... I mean, at some point, there will be some foreign aid, right?

I might be convince that conflating all the concerns might shed some in toto light on whether we are on the road backwards. However, I've pretty much worn out my ability to give the benefit-of-the-doubt around here and lean toward this being just another parlor trick of distraction - this time by flooding.

Perhaps honing-in on the specific elements would be a better course.