We should envy medieval serfs

Imagine that you, and most other people as well, are born into a class where you have no choice but to toil away at menial labour for obscenely low compensation and treated like you deserve it by the elite ruling class.

Are you imagining yourself as a serf in the year 1400 or a wage slave in 2016?

There really isn't so much difference anymore. There was a time of prosperity where some wage slaves gained long chains and loose collars, and they grew to believe that they were more free than the other slaves. But now that time is over, and we're back to the raw toil of capitalism.

Young people are acquiring massive debt in college attempting to escape this existence and find themselves only more deeply entrenched in it. What's left for them? Meaningless work that does nothing but make someone else rich.

At least a serf was under no illusion that the aristocrats deserved their wealth and that they could escape their existence. After centuries, they revolted and the aristocrats learned to fear. They tried to stop liberation and were divorced of their heads for it.

But what hope is there to be found when every serf believes themselves to be an aristocrat waiting for his inheritance?

 

Just think, you start out life taking out huge debt where almost 50% of the money you pay to go to college goes to fund those liberal professors pensions. And now when you graduate they want you to pay even higher taxes to pay for free college that by the time you get old you'll have paid for your college education at least twice.

so who has your best interest at heart?

 

I was JUST thinking the same thing! I just posted, "Will Our Children and Grandchildren Own Anything?"

There's definitely a feeling of loss!
Establishment politics and party cronyism is not good for America!
If the delegates do not faithfully represent the people, we will soon have a third party that will scorch their earth.

 

Colleges are doing what any capitalist will do if given the opportunity: Abuse their position to jack up prices.

The solution is removing capitalists.

 

hmmm.... imagine that, Liberal professors practicing capitalism yet attacking it at the same time.

Yes and government is part of the problem. Easy money begets higher prices. So high that even the middle class can no longer afford college because the government is "saving the poor" or is college yet another form of crony capitalism.

 

A pretty standard tactic of the ruling class. They try to prevent dissent by taking yesterday's dissent, softening it out until it becomes harmless, and adopting it. Then nobody can use that to hurt them.

Liberalism is not anti-capitalist. Marxism is the only working class ideology that can truly undermine and overthrow the ruling class.

The problem isn't government as a concept, the problem is who the government serves. A government comprised of the entire working class as a form of direct democracy could radically transform the world for the better.

Crony capitalism is just capitalism plus time.

 

Don't worry Our.Dear.Leader Trumpf will make America great again. We will all win again. we will win so much we will get bored with winning. We will have so much money that we will not even mind it when the Mexicans default on paying for that wall. ODL _Trumpf will make it that we will all get a trophy wife, or two, or three. On the wives there is just one small catch. They all have to be named Blondanka, Malanka, Stefanka, Ivanka, Travalanka, or Zassranka.

 

You don't have to go back to the Middle Ages. The working class suffered and struggled greatly from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. And no, I don't envy them. 12 hour days and six or seven day weeks working in unsanitary and unsafe conditions for a pittance. Why would anyone envy that?

 

Lmao. I want one named Slutanka.

 

I guess OP's narrative is the winning dialogue but caste systems were a lot more complex in eras when modern technologies, luxuries and medicines didn't even exist.

One of the problems today is that people don't need to grow up. I tried to start a company with two recent college graduates (I'm in my 30's) and it was like being around children the entire time, they would show up at meetings in T-shirts and without their documents and other nonsense.

 

Great Choice !!! The Sultanka is our most popular model. You got it, we are shipping you the Sultry Sultanka from the Amazon even before ODL-Trumpf finishes his inaugural speech.

 

Well when you take into consideration that Britain began it's colonization of America and Australia with White convict slaves.

 

Where were these slaves in America?

 

Ah, Britain, the mother of imperialism. And then her own child grew to succeed her in exploiting poorer countries.

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okay, but what?

 

A good example is Russia, shortly before the Russian Revolution led by the genius mind that was Lenin. Although serfdom in Russia had been abolished in 1861, factory bosses treated Russian workers even worse than their former feudal masters. Russian factory workers worked an average of 11 hours a day, and were the lowest paid in Europe.

The thing with medieval serfdom is that it was designed as a protective mechanism. The King gave land to Barons, who gave some of their land to knights and lower nobility, who gave some of their land to serfs who were bound to work for them. Barons were loyal to kings, knights loyal to barons, and serfs loyal to knights. This loyalty required that the classes treated each other relatively well despite the obvious inequality of them, and it also meant armies could be raised quickly, knights would call their serfs to battle as barons called knights and the king called his barons.

 

My children work hard and have no student loans. They have their own houses and decent vehicles, and other expensive toys. However, with all the immigration, I see things changing rapidly. What my sons make $30/hr doing, some kid from Mexico will do for $5 bucks an hour. They won't do as good a job, and will probably die on the job, but there's lots of them where they came from. Anyway, I hope they get out of here at least by the skin of their teeth. As for grandchildren, they aren't having any. I think they have a sense of foreboding that they can't put a finger on, but they know that things aren't right in the world. I'm relieved they aren't having grandchildren. I don't think the youngest generation will have any of the opportunities that we had. I think it will be a constant struggle for them just to survive.

Ms. Pessimist

 

Comparing life in the present in most countries, especially the US, to serfdom, is probably the most asinine, spoiled thing I've ever seen on the internet or anywhere else. OP, while you are enjoying your 80 year lifespan, typing out such on a cheap miracle machine an elite created and provided to you for peanuts, in a climate controlled living space, running water, and a hundred other examples of things "aristocrats" provide to you in voluntary transactions that you are free to deny or not in your sole discretion, maybe take a moment to think about the things that changed in the Enlightenment between the time of monarchs/serfs and why on earth you and yours are so hasty to return to that kind of central, total control.

People died for your right to sit and type out mind-boggling ridiculousness such as the OP. And you want nothing more fervently than to put the yoke on again. Unbelievable, and the only thing less believable, but true, is that tens of millions of historical illiterates want the same thing you want.

 

I agree tidbit. They are being led off the cliff and they defend the leaders. They suffer for it too.

 

Look up the term "indentured servitude"

 

To my recollection, those were debtors, not criminals, as they were in Australia.

 

The Rich ...... John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and JP Morgan.

I wonder if the people who attack the rich realize that without the rich investing they would be using oil lamp lighting, horse and buggy's, making fires for heat, no TV's, using nails as a form of exchange, no EBT card etc... Do they realize if there was no incentive to become rich they wouldn't have a computer, they wouldn't be posting on the internet etc....

wow, they must not, and they take all this for granted every day.

 

Yeah, according to stats pulled from the census by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, the average poor person today lives better than the average union worker in 1950 in terms of ownership of homes,cars, TV, indoor plumbing, Air conditioning, and many other embellishments of contemporary life that the richest human on the planet could only imagine in 1400 AD.

As to student loans, all of that is the fault of government and the colleges. Government subsidizes the loans, and guarantees some of them. Colleges add administrators, climbing walls, natatoriums for student amenities and then charge higher tuition. Congress raises student loan amounts and subsidies so kids can "afford" to go to college then the universities raise tuition, hire more administrators, build bowling lanes, gyms, etc and the cycle continues.

Then the colleges offer courses and degrees in subjects for which there is no demand in the economy. Kids graduate with $100,000 in student debt and a degree in History of Far Eastern Religions and promptly moves back in with mom and gets a job sacking groceries with that degree.

I think someone would make hay by bringing this silly spiral up in the election and promising to make colleges more responsible for kids taking on debt for courses that will never allow an income to pay back the debt.

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Power to the Peeeepppullllll!!!!

 

Oh absolutely; capitalism is all about selling you some bs you don't need, including itself. Same with democracy; and, these systems use propaganda to demonize every other system to stun the victims with excessive, nonsensical pride.

"The love of things is the root of all evil". Capitalism is: "[capital] things"+"[ism] love".

 

Lol. You don't actually believe this tripe, do you?

 

That the worship of things supersedes collective empathy & harmony, and abhors selfishness & rivalry for the luxuries at many's expense? Yes, I do—so LOL back at you, you fool.