No? Then no matter what petit bourgeois toys and little luxuries you have, you’re still not doing that good.
EDIT: I’m halfing up? on this. Fine, the serf didn’t own his house. your fucking parents and your grandparents did. so should you. Things are getting worse economically, and no amount of phones can change that.
I know very little about how things were handled pre-medival, but its my understanding that serfdom (where you were attached to a piece of land and obligated to work it) was the norm for the vast majority of common people.
That’s accurate to what serfdom was but it was an evolution of pre-medival slavery. Instead of being the personal property of a king working the fields on the kings owned land, it was about being the personal property of the crown, the state, the system (owned by the king.)
A slave could earn their freedom, be set free, or even kill their master and be free. A lot of slaves in antiquity had a tendency to overthrow kingdoms.
A serf though, was never meant to be free. Except, maybe, by another, foreign nation state. And now you know the basis of most European medieval war history.
I agree that most today are on a subsistence lifestyle.
But gonna have to disagree with “we’re at modern serfdom” in the sense that medieval serfdom existed. There are LOTS of economic barriers to picking your life up and moving somewhere else, to changing what you do for a living, etc; but there aren’t legal barriers. That is, if you decide to move or change jobs, you could land yourself in lean times, but no one is going to chop body parts off you or lock you in a dungeon for doing it (as could happen to serfs in the long ago.
Additionally, if you’re one of the lucky ones who does manage to buy a place, it becomes a financial asset. If you have kids, it can be passed to them, at which point they an sell it to go move themselves somewhere else. Contrast this with the typical depiction (which I assume is at least moderately factually correct) where your kids are now tied to the land you lived on.
Unless you mean to speak of serfdom to the government who can control your ability to travel (generally I mean internationally, but some nations do restrict intranational travel), who take a portion of your wealth on a regular basis in the form of taxes (thinking property taxes, but I guess could be applied to income and other taxes), and who can lock you up in a “dungeon” (prison - and for relatively arbitrary/subjective reasons).
I’m talking about rent and mortgages getting extraordinarily high, and that mostly financing other people’s opulent lifestyles, instead of financing general wellbeing.
Lots of places getting too expensive. And if you want cheap, you are going on a waiting list for many years. So you can effectively move nowhere for years, but still have to pay a hefty sum for rent and mortgage. How is that not a form of serfdom?
Do you own the servers for the company you work at?
I am assuming the house you lived on as a serf was yours, and you could do whatever you wanted to it. I don’t think the lord was trotting about town going “Um, regulations say no pets”
Well, you would be wrong. The house belonged to the Lord, as did the land, the surrounding lands and so on. The very well could have said “no pets”, if they had cared. They had veto power on marriage, changing labors, and everything.
The Lord owned the serf in the same way that a homeowner owns the sidewalk. They had to provide basic protections or someone higher would eventually maybe get upset. They could do basically whatever they wanted to them, but the serf could only be sold as part of the estate.
Serfdom was two steps away from slavery. You didn’t own the house, you couldn’t sell it or even leave. Your payment for work was a piece of land you could use for subsistence farming. It differs from place to place obviously but it was much worse then “regulations say no pets”.
Do you own your own house?
No? Then no matter what petit bourgeois toys and little luxuries you have, you’re still not doing that good.
EDIT: I’m halfing up? on this. Fine, the serf didn’t own his house. your fucking parents and your grandparents did. so should you. Things are getting worse economically, and no amount of phones can change that.
How many owned their own land through history?
I know very little about how things were handled pre-medival, but its my understanding that serfdom (where you were attached to a piece of land and obligated to work it) was the norm for the vast majority of common people.
That’s accurate to what serfdom was but it was an evolution of pre-medival slavery. Instead of being the personal property of a king working the fields on the kings owned land, it was about being the personal property of the crown, the state, the system (owned by the king.)
A slave could earn their freedom, be set free, or even kill their master and be free. A lot of slaves in antiquity had a tendency to overthrow kingdoms.
A serf though, was never meant to be free. Except, maybe, by another, foreign nation state. And now you know the basis of most European medieval war history.
Don’t suppose you know any places that are good to go read up on this?
Not that different from today… you have to work for the piece of land you own/rent.
I agree that most today are on a subsistence lifestyle.
But gonna have to disagree with “we’re at modern serfdom” in the sense that medieval serfdom existed. There are LOTS of economic barriers to picking your life up and moving somewhere else, to changing what you do for a living, etc; but there aren’t legal barriers. That is, if you decide to move or change jobs, you could land yourself in lean times, but no one is going to chop body parts off you or lock you in a dungeon for doing it (as could happen to serfs in the long ago.
Additionally, if you’re one of the lucky ones who does manage to buy a place, it becomes a financial asset. If you have kids, it can be passed to them, at which point they an sell it to go move themselves somewhere else. Contrast this with the typical depiction (which I assume is at least moderately factually correct) where your kids are now tied to the land you lived on.
Unless you mean to speak of serfdom to the government who can control your ability to travel (generally I mean internationally, but some nations do restrict intranational travel), who take a portion of your wealth on a regular basis in the form of taxes (thinking property taxes, but I guess could be applied to income and other taxes), and who can lock you up in a “dungeon” (prison - and for relatively arbitrary/subjective reasons).
I’m talking about rent and mortgages getting extraordinarily high, and that mostly financing other people’s opulent lifestyles, instead of financing general wellbeing.
Lots of places getting too expensive. And if you want cheap, you are going on a waiting list for many years. So you can effectively move nowhere for years, but still have to pay a hefty sum for rent and mortgage. How is that not a form of serfdom?
Do you own the servers for the company you work at?
I am assuming the house you lived on as a serf was yours, and you could do whatever you wanted to it. I don’t think the lord was trotting about town going “Um, regulations say no pets”
Well, you would be wrong. The house belonged to the Lord, as did the land, the surrounding lands and so on. The very well could have said “no pets”, if they had cared. They had veto power on marriage, changing labors, and everything.
The Lord owned the serf in the same way that a homeowner owns the sidewalk. They had to provide basic protections or someone higher would eventually maybe get upset. They could do basically whatever they wanted to them, but the serf could only be sold as part of the estate.
No, he was more like “your daughter looks nice, she’s mine now until i get bored of her. And by the way, you’ll have to take care of the bastard.”
Serfdom was two steps away from slavery. You didn’t own the house, you couldn’t sell it or even leave. Your payment for work was a piece of land you could use for subsistence farming. It differs from place to place obviously but it was much worse then “regulations say no pets”.
nope, i’m not the homeowner. i share the house with two other guys. my social security check pays for the rent