Moderator: Moderators
That's unfair.Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I think the whole "middle class" thing was just a fad anwyay. If you look back in history, it's always been a small number of wealthy people living like parasites off the rest.
The Internet and social media make history move a lot faster. This should be a "fun" decade.“Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War, no Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Tyler Durden, Fight Club
There's a book by...Scott Westerfeld? Called Peeps. Every other chapter is a case study of parasitology. It's pretty neat.Count Arioch the 28th wrote:If I was going to finish my 4 year than go into grad school, I'd go into parasitology. When you've managed to get over the ick factor, it's actually quite interesting.
A fad? The Middle Class has been around longer than most modern nation states. The crusades in the 11th century brought the demand for exotic imports from the Middle East (mostly silks and spices) and the rise of the merchant class in the 11th century. A century later we see the formation of craft guilds.Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I think the whole "middle class" thing was just a fad anwyay. If you look back in history, it's always been a small number of wealthy people living like parasites off the rest. I think we as humans are just going back to the way we naturally are.
As long as you were not a Serf.tzor wrote:Well the notion that the "middle class" are exactly at some average or median point is kind of odd and I don't think that ever really existed in history. Bear in mind, that "class" is a moving target. The average noble in the Middle Ages (pre black plague) had a standard of living well below that of the average person in the United States on welfare today.
And please don't diss feudalism. It's not comming back. That's the liberal lie, they claim something that looks like feudalism but never deliver. In fact feudalism provided a better satety net, standard of living and safety of security than socialism ever had or ever will. (Still sucks compared to capitalism ... but whatever.)
I've never understood what this sort of argument had to do with anything? Guess what, if I was time transported back to the 10th century, I'd still rather be a lord than a crap-covered farmer. The fact that I might have a better standard of living in modern Alabama is irrelevant.tzor wrote:Well the notion that the "middle class" are exactly at some average or median point is kind of odd and I don't think that ever really existed in history. Bear in mind, that "class" is a moving target. The average noble in the Middle Ages (pre black plague) had a standard of living well below that of the average person in the United States on welfare today.
Are we discussing economics or politics? Feudalism is a economic system based on the granting and subdivision of land titles where the grantee gets the major share of the labors of the land in return for ensuring the protection of those on the land.sabs wrote:The right of Nobility to sleep with the wife of any of his subjects on their wedding day?
Once again, the biggest problem with feudalism is that land is, by its nature a highly limited resource; the lord can have only a limited number of vassals under him since he only has so much land to dole out. Unlike capitalism, where capital is given out, it was not as easy for the lord to take property back from the vassal in order to give it to someone else as is the case with capital (and taxes).Wikipedia wrote:Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. Although derived from the Latin word feodum (fief), then in use, the term feudalism and the system it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people living in the medieval period.
It has to do with the "sucked" argument, which tends to view the world in absolute terms. It's always better to be rich than poor, but being a lord sucked too. Everything sucked, some things just sucked more.violence in the media wrote:I've never understood what this sort of argument had to do with anything? Guess what, if I was time transported back to the 10th century, I'd still rather be a lord than a crap-covered farmer. The fact that I might have a better standard of living in modern Alabama is irrelevant.
Let's compare housing ...The vast majority of Saxons made their living from farming. Up to 8 oxen pulled ploughs and fields were divided into 2 or sometimes 3 huge strips. One strip was ploughed and sown with crops while the other was left fallow.
The Saxons grew crops of wheat, barley and rye. They also grew peas, cabbages, parsnips, carrots and celery. They also ate fruit such as apples, blackberries, raspberries and sloes. They raised herds of goats, cattle and pigs and flocks of sheep.
However farming in Saxon times was very primitive. Farmers could not grow enough food to keep many of their animals through the winter so as winter approached most of them had to be slaughtered and the meat salted. The Saxons were subsistence farmers. (Farmers grew enough to feed themselves and their families and very little else). At times during the Saxon era there were terrible famines in England when poor people starved to death.
