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Our Modern Neo-Feudal Society
Back in the day, most humans in the Middle Ages lived in hierarchical subjection to warrior lords of the manor. Humans were serfs. Or slaves.
And the patriarchy! You don’t want to know…
But then the oppressed bourgeoisie in the towns stood up to the feudal oppressor class and defeated them in various uprisings and revolutions. Fact is that the bourgeoisie, their skills honed on the nascent market economy, were smarter than the illiterate barons feasting in their drafty castles.
The result was the oppression of the working class in another hierarchical subjection. And so the intellectuals of the world came together in a glorious movement to liberate the working class from bourgeois and capitalist subjection.
All good little boys and girls believe this. But is it true?
Obviously, socialism in its two variants, communism and fascism, makes the feudalism of the Middle Ages look like a walk in the park. All the world understands that, right? Mayor Mamdani? AOC? Bueller? Anyone?
But whatabout ordinary everyday welfare-state capitalism?
I think it is feudal.
I think that your average big corporation is feudal. Let’s call it neo-feudal, so we sound sophisticated. Its officers and managers are no different than the officers of a feudal manor.
Let’s research the movers and shakers of the feudal society working for our good friend the warrior feudal lord feasting in his castle. Google Search:
The Steward (or Seneschal): This was the highest-ranking official on the estate[.]
The Bailiff: A salaried, full-time outsider appointed directly by the lord. The bailiff was responsible for the physical administration of a specific manor.
The Reeve: Unlike the bailiff, the reeve was an unfree peasant (villein) elected annually by his fellow villagers. (Hmm. Elected? No kidding!)
The Hayward: A specialized officer tasked with guarding the boundaries of the estate’s cultivated fields.
The Miller: A highly skilled tenant who operated the manorial grain mill.
Imagine that: an administrative hierarchy just like your average corporation and your average government or NGO bureaucracy.
Let’s think about the employees in the modern corporation, paid a fixed wage or salary not dependent on profits. Let’s face it: we employees are neo-serfs, just like the agricultural workers of yore. The average corporation has: effective lifetime tenure, subject to market upheaval; promotion by satisfying your manager; health insurance; pension plans. Etc. Sometimes there is profit-sharing and stock options, especially in tech firms influenced by the VC-startup culture.
I think that the entitlement programs are neo-feudal. The government and its credentialed expert bureaucrats manage the programs and dish out the benefits to the neo-serfs. The neo-stewards and neo-bailiffs decide what pensions we need and what healthcare we need, and don’t complain if you know what is good for you. The ordinary person is just a neo-serf touching his forelock in obeisance to the bureaucratic neo-stewards and neo-bailiffs that rule over him.
Whatabout welfare? I think modern welfare is neo-slavery. Yes. Really.
Back in the day, in The Year 1000 by Lacey and Danziger, I read how a serf could go to his feudal lord and ask to become a slave. “Head for food,” it was called. You tell me what the difference is between welfare in the Year 1000 and today. Disagree? I’m willing, I’m wanting, I’m waiting to hear from you, just like the world’s most famous dustman.
Seriously, I suspect that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I think that human society is not an artificial thing. I don’t think it changes that much from dynasty to dynasty and era to era. Instead the structure of society reflects our human instincts and our human needs. It’s in the jeans.
We are social animals: but what does that mean? I suspect it means that some of us are fighters; most of us are not. Some of us are leaders; most of us are followers. Some of us are inventors; most of us are imitators, plagiarists (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Many of us are carers; lots of us need to be cared for.
That means that society can’t be just organized from the top down, although it’s always hierarchical. The purest hierarchical society known to man is Communism. How did that work out, Joey and Mao? Society can’t just be from the middle out, although it’s always cooperative and mutual. It’s a combination of hierarchy, of shared culture, of shared tradition, of cooperation, of shared morality,
And of course, there’s the price organism. Let’s not call it a price system, because that’s too mechanical and Enlightenment rationalism. Maybe we should call it the price universe, because it stretches from horizon to horizon, and way beyond the boundaries of states and communities.
OK, I know I’m being a naughty boy here, comparing our modern society to feudalism. But I am making a larger point. That we are not as special as we think.
Mind you, I am reading a biography of Alexander the Great. And you don’t want to know about the assassinations of likely rivals for political power that took place in Macedonia when the latest monarch died. At present, here in these United States, we do not wipe out the defeated presidential candidate after an election. Although we do like a nice bit of lawfare to teach the defeated candidate a lesson if his name is Trump.
| Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:44:28 GMT |
Two-tier Justice on Immigration
The Brits are all in a twist about two-tier justice. Muslim rape gangs barely get a mention. Brits complaining about anything get a visit from the local Bobby.
And here in the US we have two-tier justice over illegal immigration. In Compact Sam Munson writes about “How Immigration Created a Two-Tier Legal System.” He mentions Tou Lue Vang.
Vang arrived in America illegally as a child and later became a legal permanent resident. In 2006, he was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct for long-running abuse of a ten-year-old girl. He lost his status and was ordered removed, yet remained in the United States for another twenty years under federal supervision.
And, of course there is Kilmar Abrego García.
Abrego, who entered the country illegally as a teen, first came to the attention of immigration authorities in 2019 after an arrest for loitering and marijuana possession in Maryland. He spent seven months in ICE custody. Before his release, he was denied asylum but granted a withholding of removal order to El Salvador on the grounds that he feared persecution by the country’s violent gangs.
Don’t we all fear those gangs! Why just last weekend in Seattle we had a shootout in which three people died, and police say it might have been gang-related. So let’s fix our gang problem here in the USA and let the Salvadoreans solve their own gang problem. Wait! They already did, by putting all the gang members in jail.
But what is really driving our liberal overlords to waive legal penalties for illegal aliens? Apart, of course, from Allyism, that we liberals are fighting for the oppressed against the oppressors until our dying day.
As usual, one of our liberal friends can be relied on to accidentally tell us the truth. Michelle Wu, mayor of the City of Boston.
“Every person, every single human being, has the legal right to come to the United States and seek asylum or shelter, and those policies have been in place for a long time”.
Notice that this is a moral statement. But Michelle Wu is a politician, a government official. The first job of a government is to defend the borders. The second job is to defend the streets. Everything else is just gifting the supporters. Morality and rights have nothing to do with the case.
I suppose that most Democratic politicians and activists are a little ashamed of the real grubby nature of their jobs. They would rather be bejeweled nobles, or devoted activists, benevolently ruling a grateful peasantry, and extending the hand to “everyone, everywhere, all at once.”
Of course, back in the day, Democrats were all-in to control immigration: President Obama in 2014. President Clinton in 1995. Bless their hearts.
So what changed? I’d like to be allowed to take a look under the blanket, and get to see all the nod, nod, wink, wink. But I suspect that the reason is partly that the easy path for a Democratic politician is to defer to devoted activists who always need a moral cause to demonstrate their goodness, and partly to understand that recent immigrants, since at least the mid-19th century, have voted Democrat, so what’s not to like.
But I think that our Democratic friends need to veer to the center on this. Defending the border is a human thing that goes back Before the Dawn. It’s the thing even for monkeys and apes. It’s in the jeans.
| Tue, 28 Jul 2026 22:43:56 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
Three Religions: The religion of the educated Gentry is creativity; the religion of the responsible Commoners is an Axial Age religion; the religion of the subordinate clients is vengeful gods.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence — Napoleon Bonaparte
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Consequences of Jordan B. Peterson
