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No, feudalism is a hierarchical economical system that is capable of producing and maintaining heavy cavalry in a poor agrarian society.

When famine is likely, feudalism ensures that the knight, his horse, and his family, never starves and can defend the population at all times.

Knights were granted enough land such that it was deemed possible that it could feed the serfs living there, and produce enough excess to feed the knight and his horse.

Indentured servitude was a way of guaranteeing a stable population of serfs, and prohibiting competition between the landed gentry, otherwise the serfs would urbanize or move to richer lands. Feudalism is about utilizing all the land for the purpose of raising knights.

The "attendant absurdities" only appeared once the economy started producing so much excess that it became hard to justify the system, even though the system is what allowed the various realsm to be protected from raiders and each other in the first place.

As somebody who spends a bit of time in East Asia, face-to-face, personal relationships are how business is accomplished. People from Western societies struggle with doing business in these areas because of this. There's no shortage of cultural business guides that talk about chopstick usage and how to bow.

But the reality is, you have to form a personal relationship in these countries to accomplish many things. Business deals are sealed over rounds of drinking or dinner or karaoke and other similar activities.

Change is occurring slowly towards more Western style business. But it's not clear if it will ever be fully adopted. Westerners often struggle with lose attitudes towards contracts and regulations, because the core of the business attitude is about personal trust.

The reasons for changes away from this system are complex, but likely because Western systems of business are built around assumptions that you can't trust your business associate, so both parties and the legal system does support strict attitudes about contracts and regulations -- collateral or contractual penalties are often used to ensure compliance rather than trust. Risk minimization is something Western businesses are pretty good at.

As more and more people start to do business together, they realize that no amount of karaoke and liquor will prevent your business associate from screwing you over. So eventual social reform is happening and is likely to continue to happen until a local comfort level is found. It might not look anything like the Western model in the end, but it is likely to be informed by it.

I just finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro's "The remains of the day" which portrayed the life of an over-loyal butler who devotes all his life to his lord, and realizes at the end that he's lost all his personal life along the way.

Such was the life for a lot of of the people living in the feudal period - a servant's life fully devoted to your master, without questioning right or wrong.

It is left as an exercise for the reader to compare this mindset with those of software engineers at startups. 3 pages, 12 pt. font, due Friday.

Just a coincidence the history of feudal systems is the history of sadists tormenting the people they lord it over? Its all fine and good as long as you are one of the people with marriages and land bonds to barter. But the vast majority of people called it serfdom and died young.

You're claim has minimal basis in history. The number of sadists tormenting their serfs is surely non-zero, but also not systemic. For one thing, lords DEPEND on their serfs for their well being. Their serfs economic output is crucial.

Yeah like historical omnipotent despots cared about their cattle or were smart modern people who understood economics.

Every storey about feudalism is about the sadism. Why? Because its exciting I'm sure, but also because it was an absolutely common theme?

Just like slave merchants and slave masters depend on their slaves for their well being.

Regarding the minimal basis in history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom#Rights_of_serfdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grand_Knout.gif Punishment with a knout. Whipping was a common punishment for Russian serfs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom#Slaves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_1956_Supplementa...

Not directly part of any other feudal system, but Ottoman's empire has established the order of jannisaries by taking young male boys from the enslaved nation - these were trained to be the most ferocious fighters, and even the sultan had to comply occasionally with their demands.

Hardly a thing you can see in an capitalistic system.

No that is the common mistake of employing mercenarys and finding out to late that have taken over as the Indian Princes found to their cost when they got to British and french to fight for them.

Then problems the Roman empire had with the Praetorians deciding who was to be emperor is a related problem

The wealth produced by capitalism that allows rising standards of living is a historical aberration. For nearly all of human history Malthusianism was correct and most people lived on the brink of starvation.

Feudalism was no different from any other pre-industrial social structure, a parasitic rentier class taxed the peasantry to support their lifestyles. This was true from the god kings of Sumer, Mycenae and Mexico, the cultured, civilized, literate empires of China and Rome and the warlord kingdoms of Europe and India.

Most of human history was a boot stomping on a human face and if we're not very lucky this Dteamtime will end too.

Feudalism is terrible for the people (well, at least more than capitalism), and I'm not suggesting otherwise (in fact, I was warning against inadvertently going back to feudalism by trying to build a "trust-less" economy). But feudalism wasn't absurd, either. It was very logical.

In fact, most systems where power is concentrated in the hands of the few, while the majority is exploited by the powerful make more sense. It is the crowning achievement of the West that we've been able to slowly and excruciatingly build large democracies based on trust in the system. While (very) far from perfect, these democracies are closer to the humanist ideal than any other system in human history.

It's easy to read In fact, it makes much more sense than capitalism and think you are talking about it being a desirable situation.

(just because much of what "makes sense" about capitalism is the situation it puts the people in, especially modern regulated markets, as opposed to the worst examples of capitalism)

There were several factors playing in favour of the serfs. First, there was competition between the feudal lords, if one neglected his responsibilities too much and treated his subjects to harshly they could flee and find themselves another patron. What prevented a Silicon Valley wage cartel type race to the bottom was the emergence of cities and a merchant class entirely outside the feudal system. A serf who settled in a city had no master at all. The story of the Middle Ages is the struggle between the feudal system and the forces outside it, first the church, then the cities.

Also, the church launched a peace movement, just because someone had to keep up the public peace; in 9th century Europe warlordism had spiraled out of control. Ultimately, they were successful in restricting private war between the nobility and mitigating the impact on the general population.

Living conditions for the peasantry in the Middle Ages could have been worse. They didn't have cars and flatscreens, fridges and washing machines, but they had more holidays than the American worker today. And no back-breaking commute.

My father was a mortgage broker back in the 90s, so I had a chance to see hundreds of deals done - and there was zero "trust/faith" when it came to credit. Everything requires collateral, and the presumption, going in, is that the borrower is going to default, and you will need to seize the collateral in order to make good.

Even in 2007/2008, there was a weird twisted logic that suggested that because, historically, the market for real-estate doesn't all go down at once, that the collateralized debt obligations were credit worthy on the basis of the their underlying assets.

That logic, of course, turned out to be based on false premises - but not because the bankers had any trust/faith in the borrowers.

I am reasonably sure "credit" means "belief" rather than faith (i.e. I believe you will pay back, I have faith in $DEITY).

The difference is relevant: the banking system works based on the fact that I don't have to trust you 100%, I only need to believe you will be able to pay back, and if you don't I will come and break your legs (or equivalently, I will recur to the judicial system and ask for my pound of flesh).

It doesn't need trust, it only needs accountability.

Actually, trust goes much deeper than a crude lending example, which is used merely for demonstration. First, banks can't break your legs; they really don't have the resources to do that (not now, and not when the lenders were warlords and used the loans to buy armies).

The use of violence, or the threat of it, in a capitalistic society is much more complicated. The direct wielders of violence, say, the police, need to do as they're told. Money can't be the only incentive, because all sides have it. In our society, the police (more or less) have faith in the judicial system, and believe they're doing the right thing.

This system of trust permeates everything in modern Western societies.