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Nowhere in my comment do I use the word empathy or even imply that peasants were materially better treated. My argument is solely that the gentry of times past were aware that their lifestyle rested on exploitation of the lower classes in a way that today's PMC are often able to deny to themselves.
One could easily say, as you do, that it's worse to be aware of exploitation and live it anyway. But the nominal equality that the modern liberal upper classes grant the lower classes comes with precious few material benefits.
For what it's worth I also reject your trichotomy. Human relationships come in millions of forms, shades of transaction, friendship, duty, love, filial piety, hatred, self aggrandizement, manipulation, jealousy, and hierarchy come into each one.
Where are you going with this? I can see here the basis of an ultrareactionary ‘slavery was good, actually. Russian absolutism and lawlessness is the way to go’ take, or a communist ‘capitalistic exploitation is just as bad as the worst examples in history”, I wouldn’t mind reading either, but this is just soft equivocation. What you proably call nuance and complexity, I call a refusal to differentiate. When you condemn all, you condemn none.
Compared to when they did not have ‘nominal’ equality, they’re richer, healthier, more educated, live longer, work less, are protected from arbitrary corporal punishments, incarceration, forced labour, rape. But aside from those, precious few.
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