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Comment by why_Mr_Anderson | Hacker News Reader

and in addition let him be punished by whipping according to the law, except in the case of murder or arson, for which a fine may be exacted.

Punishment for killing someone was only a fine? Dark Ages indeed.

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Sending people to prison to do nothing is kinda self-defeating if it’s your people. And in this context fine is arguably worse than being whipped.

Prison in this time period wasn't really a punishment thing, it's what you did when you were trying to ransom someone you captured in battle mostly. Punishments would have mostly been fines, with some corporal punishment and of course capital punishment.

That applied to aristocracy only, didn't it? Peasants were considered as slightly more intelligent livestock, their lives nearly worthless.

No, peasants had rights which varied immensely depending on their exact status and where they were. Still the aristocracy couldn't just kill them or take their stuff, and one of the primary responsibilities of the aristocracy or other landholders was adjudicating disputes between peasants. So if we were two free peasants who got in a fight, we might end up in court with the lord or their representative deciding between us, with one or both of us possibly facing fines.

Serfs had a lower maximum tax rate (33%) than we have in the USA.

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/apr/19/20010419-0220...

I don't think that is a good metric, in a couple different ways. First you can't universalize the tax rate of serfs like that, and serfs don't represent all peasants/lower classes. We are talking about hundreds of years across a huge area. Different social classes also paid different taxes, a villein's obligation to their lord in a village would be different than a free peasants. Much of what a peasant paid was also in kind, either in the form of crops or work for their lords estate. The "history" in the linked article in uncited, so I am not sure where the author is getting that figure from but at best it represents the lives of a specific group of people, not some statement across centuries and countries.

I'm not sure, but it may be referencing the old Germanic weregild.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weregild

Interesting, I've never heard about that. Thank you for the link.

Serfs (“our” people) were beaten, free folk were fined. In the US, think W2 employees versus 1099 workers. :-)

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