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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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For start, slaves were not guaranteed food and shelter.

This was broadly understood for thousands of years to be the one advantage of servitude and the one disadvantage of freedom. People with no duties to others are offered no protection.

For whom "post-industrial and back to virility and violence" would be better?

Free men.

Are you aware about food production nowadays and how it compared to past? And how starvation used to be far more common?

You even claim that benefit of slavery is that you were more likely to eat.

Free men.

Who you count here? Noble elite class? Rampaging neovikings? Starving peasantry?

Yes I am indeed aware of the industrial revolution.

Who you count here? Noble elite class? Rampaging neovikings? Starving peasantry?

Anyone who is capable of violence and not beholden to a master usually has a lot to gain in feudal transitions.

Think of Li Zongren and his men, and all his and their peers.

Of course this is also risky, but that's the nature of such times.

not beholden to a master usually has a lot to gain in feudal transitions

whole point of feudal societal setup is that basically everyone has feudal lord above them and they are beholden to someone (and in some cases have people beholden to them)

so I guess you argue that whoever ends being king would benefit? That is likely true, but it is remarkably small group of people, and given that others are going to lose, I have no idea who would prefer such setup

You overestimate the rigidity of allegiances in such a setup because like many you confuse absolutism with feudalism.

It's true that eventually things do concentrate among a defined set of winners as empire sets in again but it can take decades or centuries to materialize.

And it is infinitely better to be a professional soldier in a feudal system than a NCO in an imperial army in terms of prestige, personal power, etc.

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