Disease kills over half the world's population, what happens next?

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by notyoueither


Aside from that whole serfdom thing.

People still spend 20-30 years of their life paying off a mortgage.

[KrazyHorse]

You can sell your house and move at any time.

[Fake Boris]

But wherever you go, you're still dependent on landlords and rent, or mortgages and bankers.

[Fake Boris]

And given the lack of political union and weakness of police in the Middle Ages, moving away to another city and becoming an artesan was fairly easy.

[KrazyHorse]

WTF are you on about?

Serfdom is the legal disability preventing individuals from moving off their land. It's as though you were born with a lifetime obligation to rent from the same landlord and work the same job.

If you can't see the difference between that and the plight of the working man today I'd say that you're beyond help.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
And given the lack of political union and weakness of police in the Middle Ages, moving away to another city and becoming an artesan was fairly easy.

Depends on the time and the place. Not all places had cities nearby or had work for people who wanted it.

And I think if you read my sig you'll note that I was already aware of this.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
WTF are you on about?

Serfdom is the legal disability preventing individuals from moving off their land. It's as though you were born with a lifetime obligation to rent from the same landlord and work the same job.

If you can't see the difference between that and the plight of the working man today I'd say that you're beyond help.

I'm aware that folks like you give a great deal of importance to written laws. I'm more interested in the practical results. (See my second post as an example of my logic).

I wouldn't say there's no difference at all, but the structure is similar. You get heavily indebted towars a 'Lord' to get a degree (prerequisite for a decent job) and a house. Then you call this ability to contract 'freedom'. That you might change your landlord, or get a better interest rate with another bank, does not change IMO your essential class status.

'Freedom' anyway has always been defined (primarily) as 'the system as it is right now'. In most medieval philosophy, a 'free' peasant was a peasant who had a good Lord. Today -especially in America- it mostly applies to the economic liberties of wealthy folks.

[Fake Boris]

The broader point is that living standards improvements are not inherently due to the changes in the legal system. They're mostly a contingental side-effect of the massive material wealth we're able to produce.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm aware that folks like you give a great deal of importance to written laws. I'm more interested in the practical results. (See my second post as an example of my logic).

Yes, and the practical results are that I've lived in at least 10 different places in 3 cities, have had half a dozen different jobs, and can choose to go get another one if I want to. The only individual entity with a similar claim over me as feudal lords had over their serfs is the State.

The necessity of living somewhere is not the same as a requirement to live in ONE PLACE for your entire life and do only ONE THING.

I wouldn't say there's no difference at all, but the structure is similar. You get heavily indebted towars a 'Lord' to get a degree (prerequisite for a decent job) and a house.

a) No, you don't get "heavily indebted" unless you choose to go to a private school. I personally have absolutely no debt from schooling. The only debt I have is a car loan.

b) Even if I AM to get indebted I can choose from among competing lenders. I am not born owing some random person service for the rest of my life.

The idea of debt as functionally equivalent to serfdom is facile and cliched. Serfdom is an inherited disability. Debt is entered into by a pair of actors who presumably have their own best interest at heart.

[KrazyHorse]

In most medieval philosophy, a 'free' peasant was a peasant who had a good Lord.

No, a free man was a man who was not a villein (serf) or a sokeman.



Villeiny was a LEGAL status. In England meant that villeins and sokemen could only receive justice in their lord's court, while freemen were allowed to seek the King's justice. Both freemen and sokemen could leave their lord's land at will. Freemen generally only paid money rents to their lord, while sokemen and villeins did feudal service. Villeins often had to pay their lord to get married, had to pay their lord Christmas and Michaelmas gifts, had to present their lords gifts upon the birth of the lord's son.

[KrazyHorse]

The upshot is that lords had almost COMPLETE and unilateral control over their villeins.

A villein couldn't walk over to the next lord's fief and take up villeiny there. That meant that his lord could take as much from him as the lord pleased. If my landlord raises my rents I move somewhere else.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Aside from that whole serfdom thing.

Already a factor in Roman times, and it could be argued that serfdom offered a modicum more security for rural peasants than was available to free farmers in the Roman eras.

Plus, prior to serfdom most agriculture was done by slaves...

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Plus, prior to serfdom most agriculture was done by slaves...

Actually, that's a myth found useful in the creation of Western vassalage systems. The transition was not as simple as slaves to serfs, a seeming improvement. Most Roman farmers were freemen. Post the fall of Rome, the new masters did not treat their peasants as either slaves or serfs. They did, however, quickly begin to introduce mobility restrictions.

By around 800 - 900 full vassalage arrangements began to emerge that kept the local landlords from killing and fighting with one another all the time. Rules related to peasants were introduced to keep these guys from fighting over labororers. Eventually the structure was extended to include the peasants that "went with the land" in feudal fiefdoms.

That arrangement was pretty ironclad until the plagues of the 14th century. Throughout the lands once subject to Charlemagne's (Karl der Grosse) rule, no one could pass thru a city's gates without proof of their business in doing so and the permission of their master or "the courts." (Those who were not apprentices, serfs, prisoners, i.e., free men had papers indicating that they were subject to the law of the King, generally stated as "the courts." Similarly anyone on the road was expected to be with their master or be a master. Folks without proofs (or unlucky enough to fall in with those that captured such folks and destroyed their paperwork), would be "arrested" and would end up indentured to some master for life.

The plagues broke this by reducing the number of workers in many projects, cities, and fields, below a sustaining number. Thus, gate guards and road patrols began to assist folks in going to certain masters instead of preventing them from entering the city and possibly overwhelming the food supply.

Post the plagues, the ranks of three generations of replacement workers were greatly depleted (also the reason for the continued population decline). So the struggle to improve labor movement and provide training began at last to take Europe away from its overpopulated, mostly stagnant existance with every nation working distinctly marginal land where labor in was greater than value out.

The remarkable number of deaths in a very short period of time of the "Great" plagues was augmented by smaller plague incidents throughout this period.