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Comment by LekkoscPiwa | Hacker News Reader

That's not capitalism, that's feudalism: A 0.1% - Aristocrats, Barons, Kings, etc. A 10% - service professionals: shoemakers, weapon makers, creditors (bankers), accountants and whoever else the 0.1% might need to run their empires A 90% - Peasants - born in debt, will die in debt. Wage slaves - get enough money to perform the work and nothing else.

That's called neo-feudalism. At the top are private creditors of nations - central bankers. The rest owes feud to them from the moment they are born (i.e. the US newborn already has to pay off few hundred thousand in debt through their live-time)

Please don't call it capitalism.

And one more thing -- what really destroyed neo-feudal society was the French Revolution. We need Robespierre's and Danton's guillotining banksters and their whore neo-feudal political class.

That's the only way to revert back to capitalism and liberalism.

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Feudalism and capitalism are both defined by the mechanism of interaction between people, not by what percentage of society different sorts of people occupy.

Feudalism - each person (besides the highest king) is bound by oath to serve his master.

Capitalism - each person owns some property and has the right to trade property/labor with other willing parties.

>Feudalism - each person (besides the highest king) is bound by oath to serve his master

Nope. Not by an "oath". By debt. Check your history books.

I think you may both be right.

Feudal serfs were bound to the 'land' in a sort of debtor-lendor scenario, and could be sold along with the land beneath their feet. They just couldnt' be sold as individuals.

However, knights, squires, barons, etc. were bound to serve their superiors by oath. Its the oath that kept the political and military structure together.

From wiki: "Knight-service was a form of Feudal land tenure under which a knight held a fief or estate of land termed a knight's fee (fee being synonymous with fief) from an overlord conditional on him as tenant performing military service for his overlord."

There still was debt to be paid even by knights. Every year the debt obligation had to be met via service or hard ca$h.

EDIT: changing "lords" by knights in the Middle Ages was common. I.e. for few years a knight served a French king just to serve German Prince for a few years after that. So, it looks like they couldn't have taken their oaths too seriously or there had to be an easy way to have the whole thing cancelled.

"In medieval Europe, an oath of fealty (German: Lehnseid) was a fundamental element of the feudal system in the Holy Roman Empire. It was sworn between two people, the obliged person (vassal) and a person of rank (liege lord)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fealty

Agreed. However, in my personal opinion, debt enforced by the law is more important in that case than oath.

Don't remember the exact date or edict name, but when in the Roman Empire a law was introduced banning debtors from moving too far from their creditors - that's when according to many historians Middle Ages have started.

It does vary by region. Russian serfdom was closer to a form of slavery, with serfs owned by the estates, while in Western Europe, serfs were usually formally free to leave but in practice unable to.

The usual explanation for the emergence of feudalism in Western Europe involves market forces as well. As people fled the starving cities at the collapse of the Roman Empire, they had little choice but to agree to whatever terms rural estate landowners offered, which were generally not favorable terms.

I think one reason a sort of libertarianism was popular in the early U.S. is that there was always an alternative option: go to the frontier and homestead. So people really felt that they had individual freedom, and could escape any onerous sharecropping arrangement by just heading west. But in Europe all land was already spoken for, so there was nowhere to go homestead.

Or we could just build a colony of smart people on the moon. Or Mars. Or my favorite, a floating city in the climate stable upper atmosphere of Venus. A lot easier to generate renewable power there.

I think that is what is really missing in the world, a frontier to go to when your oppressors get out of hand.

Unless it becomes like Elysium? :D

somewhere in or on the ocean?

Nope, let's call it for what it is. The current situation is capitalism and liberal doctrines's consequences. Some economists and thinkers have said all along that this is the only outcome possible for such ideologies.

Banksters is a term that was widely used and is regaining ground in far-right populist parties in Europe (and America if I recall correctly).

But I like the idea of neo-feudalisme, it fits the picture and describes the situation quite well.

The current environment evolved only due to specific circumstances involving industrialization and globalization, and the fact the people at large completely missed the concentration of power by bankers and wealthy dyanasties.

I think the problem emerges whenever you have an economic system built round game theory (which really capitalism is) where most people don't rationalize their participation such that the few recognizing the game they are playing can exploit the passive participants and siphon their productivity they add to said game.

We are all playing, but a huge number of people I know don't rationalize that participation. They don't look beyond buying a car, house, nice clothes, paying rent on a dozen different things they don't recieve tangable long term goods from (ie, $300 a month phone service). They don't ever ask why their tax bill is huge or why they even have income tax at all, because their parents told them it is inevitable and they were ground through an educational process with a peripheral task of grooming them to be assembly workers.

> That's not capitalism, that's feudalism

Why not call it capitalism. They call it capitalism, everyone else does. How much do you want to bet going around asking what economic system US has and less then 0.1% will say neo-feudalism.

Using alternate monikers used to justify still believing in this magic religion (oops I mean magic economic system) is a bit silly. This is the typical

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Why not just assume that capitalism is an idealized system that never works, it is just too unstable.

If this pattern seems familiar, it is not surprising they used to say the same thing about communism. Oh what they have in country X is not communism. "True communism is not like that, this is Y (replace with ugly sounding term)".

> That's the only way to revert back to capitalism and liberalism.

Revert to what? Guillotining people in the streets? Or rather are there good examples of capitalist paradises on earth here to inspire us?

You do realize the Parent was being funny?

And seriously, saying something is feudalism doesn't make it so. There is so much wrong with your post I don't even know where to start. Just wow. Feudalism is a military system with lords and vassals. Vassals provided military services to the lord in trade for land. Calling SF neofeudalist in hystrionic nonsense. No such thing exists in SF. Nothing even close to that exists.

You might want to google feudalism and capitalism. Here's some links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feudalism

http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/difference-be...

>At the top are private creditors of nations - central bankers."

Only took a few comments before someone blamed things on the Fed. Nice.

>i.e. the US newborn already has to pay off few hundred thousand in debt through their live-time). Please don't call it capitalism.

You understand that "paying back" public debt means reducing private financial assets right? Of course you don't.

>We need Robespierre's and Danton's guillotining banksters and their whore neo-feudal political class.

Yeah, let's kill people who undertake a specific, necessary occupation in society!

Take your ignorant, conspiratorial hatred elsewhere.

Wait, why are central bankers "necessary"? We invented bitcoin 4 years ago, and it didn't take that long for the rise and fall of pagers to go through.

>"why are central bankers "necessary"

I didn't say they were, though I much prefer a system with them included.

I said "banksters" are necessary. You know, in the same sense garbage collectors and lawyers and doctors and teachers are necessary. I mean, I guess you could argue that none are really necessary. But again, as a bank customer and user of credit (which I'm sure you and 95% of everyone else here is), I will call them necessary for my desired society.

>I didn't say they were, though I much prefer a system with them included.

So you don't believe in the markets setting price of credit more efficiently than a burocrat?

You understand that burocrats setting prices doesn't work, right? Or 70 years of communistic "experiment" isn't enough for you to get it?

What you don't understand is that there are more important things in the world than repaying banksters. Greece has been forced to repay to the banksters. The cost: neo-nazi at 22% in the national polls. In opposition to this what the media claim there is more to live than bankster bonus.

>"What you don't understand is that there are more important things in the world than repaying banksters."

"Banksters" didn't force loans on Greece, or tell them to cook their books and spend frivolously. The politicians and citizens did that.

But guess what? They are free to default and not pay back any "banksters"! The repercussions for that will be the inability to get credit in the future. But, who cares, right? Because no one needs that credit that the "banksters" provide, according to you.

It still might happen. Then the complaint will be, at some point in the future, "Why are the banksters charging Greece extortionate rates to borrow money?!?"

Some people don't get it.

> But guess what? They are free to default and not pay back any "banksters"!

Oh yeah?! Says who? EU? So the Euro lands in the trash bin and then there is a whole line of countries that want to leave the Titanic as well? You're so naive.

Let me explain it to you how it works: If I'm an investor. Private investor. I buy a stock, equity or a bond, or commodity. I understand that there is risk and reward. That the asset may go up in price but it also may go down. So, if I buy Greek bonds - and note, I do it after analyzing the market, etc, etc - I know they may go up, or they may go down in price. Actually, they may go to zero. And that's a healthy, normal capitalism. That's my attitude when I invest my money. But when you are bankster? Do you accept the capitalistic risk&reward model? Do you accept that the Greek bonds that you bought back in 2000-2007 may go to zero. Oh nein! Then you call Die Frau Merkel and ask her for a favor. Because you gave her money for the campaign, didn't you? So now it's payback time! Die Frau together with the whole EU then forces little Greece to repay as if the bonds were not at zero. As if they were great investment.

Fantastic!

The banksters are the folks I described above. And for the mentality itself - like we should be paid even if it's our error here and even if it means neo-nazis governing Greece - is the reason for which I would behead them with pleasure my friend. And don't confuse these clown with true bankers who believe in capitalism, believe in risk&reward and would just take the hit like they believe in the system (capitalism). Not some aristocrats who think that socialism should be only for them and rest of the populace should live in capitalism.

Greeks vote neo-nazi because they know that the Golden Down would have balls enough to cancel the whole so-called debt to these crooks with a stroke of a pen.

People will probably take you more seriously if you stop using words like "bankster."

bankster - someone who took risks on the markets. Lost. Expects others to pay for his mistakes. Preferably tax-payers. So he can continue his lavish life-style. Embraces socialism for himself, and capitalism for everybody else.

banker - someone who took risks on the markets. Lost. Took the hit. Takes responsibility for his actions. Doesn't believe that there will be the end of the world if he goes bankrupt. Understand and embraces free market capitalism with both sides of it: risk and reward.

That type of feudalism isn't sustainable in a world with increasing automation. A better model would be slavery in Rome immiserating both the slaves (obviously) and the people who used to work the land, but on a far larger scale. Speaking of the implications of service robots, Hans Moravec once said, "Perhaps governments will decide they no longer need citizens." Which is unlikely. But the truth in that statement is more and more people's survival will depend on the sympathy (rather than self-interest) of the rich and the politicians whose bridles they hold.

"Please don't call it capitalism."

What if they're the same thing?

I think in this case the OP is rather in love with the idea of capitalism and thinks it is a pure and perfect goal to strive for except for the nasty little practical implementations that keep getting in the way.

So given what we have now doesn't work we have to rename because otherwise we would be tarnishing capitalism's great reputation.

No! That what you describe is that what I would fight against the most. Because it gives a bad name to capitalism. My philosophy is rather that capitalism without democracy is as great utopia as communism is.

I think that the problem is that the political elites in many Western countries, especially in the USA, watch China and falsely conclude that capitalism is much more effective in conjunction with authoritarian type of government. Like in China. Or Singapore. Or many other South-East Asian emerging economies. The strength of capitalism derives from democracy and freedom. Because capitalism thrives on innovation and "dangerous" ideas. Slaves or scared people aren't innovative. Yep, you can produce stuff in China, but the innovation part needs to happen in place where people haven't been afraid to think freely and express themselves.

I hope that I made myself more clear. If people vote for social-democracy, let it be.

Also, I'll give you a few example of why I don't think that the current system is capitalistic. First of all, the zombie banks in capitalism would be allowed to fail. Go bankrupt. The moment we decided to take from the regular folk via taxes to support zombie banks is the very moment in which I'd say we're not capitalists any more.

Just my line of thought. If capitalism, regulated or not, leads to neo-feudalism, maybe that society is actually the target for which capitalism is just a catalyst.

http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

> what really destroyed neo-feudal society was the French Revolution

It was really messy though. I am sure the 0.1% will understand this fact. It is in their best interest to make the rest of us think we have something, something to lose. Therefore, our buying more "stuff" helps them two-fold. They have sold us more stuff, therefore soaking away liquidity which increases the value of their money. Furthermore, it gives an impression that we have "stuff" to lose as well in case of conflict.

I was with you up to the part where you think chopping off people's heads is" the only way to revert back to capitalism and liberalism."

I guarantee the Wall Street shenanigans would be sorted out, post haste, with the careful application of separating certain greedy, conniving, overly-large heads from their bodies.

But then maybe I'm just jaded.

That's the only way.

Coffee without coffeine. Beer without alcohol. Sex, but in condom. War but without casaulties. The very core of the post-modern folk is that they want the thing but without the most crucial element of that thing.

Revolution without a Revolution?

That's why nowadays nothing changes. Because all that's left are empty words.

"Terror without virtue is fatal; virtue without terror is impotent"

You propose impotent solution. That won't work.

I didn't call it capitalism. I said that the 0.1% were capitalists. I.e. owners of capital. They're not the bankers, almost all of whom are in the professional class. These are the people who own not just the banks, but the F500 companies, etc.

There are other ways to escape neo-feudalism... Guillotining is just a bad soltuion to a bad problem.

And you'll also need an industrial revolution to provide manufacturing jobs.

Yes. We can call it capitalism.

Capitalism is private ownership of the means of productions. There is nothing in capitalism that implies less inequality. If the balance between capital and work switches to favor capital more, there will be inequality.

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