Austerity = Feudalism

[kpete]

The money the Lords lost under their risky transactions somehow becomes the problem of us Serfs under Austerity. In essence, under Austerity, the Serfs simply live to service the debt of the Lords. It leads to a cold, heartless system where the Lords response to every cry from the Serfs is "FU, pay me!"


Serfs: "Our homes are being foreclosed."

Lords: "FU, pay me!"

Serfs: "Our children are hungry."

Lords: "FU, pay me!"

Serfs: "We can't afford medical care."

Lords: "FU, pay me!"

Serfs: "We can't afford to retire."

Lords: "FU, pay me!"

You get the point.

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1091102/46067237#c35?mode=alone;showrate=1#c35

[socialist_n_TN]

1. And all to support a system that fucks the rest of us over..........

What's worse, these types of screw ups are endemic to the system itself. As sure as God made little green apples, there WILL BE MORE OF THESE COLLAPSES IN THE FUTURE! And we'll be expected to pay for them too.

[JDPriestly]

2. Unfortunately, both parties are supported by and support the would-be feudal lords.

We vote for the more benevolent of the feudal lords. That's what we do.

[Viva_Daddy]

3. As Michael Parenti once said: "The rich have only ever wanted one thing: EVERYTHING!"

[WillyT]

4. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[white_wolf]

5. In some ways capitalism is worse than feudalism.

Serfs were bound to the land and there was very little upward mobility, that is true. However, there was an upside to being bound to the land. You would never be unemployed, the lord had an obligation to provide certain protections to his vassals in exchange for their oaths of fealty. In modern capitalism the capitalists feel no obligation to their employes and there is no guarantee of protections or employment.

[malthaussen]

6. Most of the obligations of the lords were honored in the breach.

I think a more correct equation would be Libertarianism = Bastard Feudalism, since the Libertarians want to privatize everything and have no government oversight whatsoever. But it is often hard to tell the Libertarians from the Capitalists: though the former supposedly are great supporters of socially liberal stances, on closer scrutiny, it is clear that they want liberty for themselves and their friends, not for all.


-- Mal

[HiPointDem]

7. And you got a portion of the harvest and a patch of ground to till, the right to cut wood, the

possession of your own tools, etc.

[malthaussen]

8. By similar reasoning, slavery could be said to be better than capitalism

... and that argument was sure-enough used before the Civil War made it moot.

-- Mal

[HiPointDem]

9. No, it's a bit different, because under feudalism, serfs had specific rights, and their obligations

were delineated.

Under slavery, slaves had no delineated rights and were property.

The reason for the comparison to capitalism is that, in the sense of the right of access to resources, serfs at least for part of the feudal period had an advantage over the capitalist working class.

[malthaussen]

10. Within limits, I'll grant you "right of access to resources."

But only in the sense that they had "right of access" to resources that were already theirs. Only by complex (and legally-entangled) means could they expand those resources, even to provide for their own children. In the cases of both slaves and serfs, however, they were largely subject to the whims of their masters. The slave (in the US, anyway) could escape these whims by fleeing to Canada; the serf could escape by fleeing to a charter town (at least, after charter towns came into existance). The capitalist peon is, to a large extent, also subject to the whim of his master -- particularly before organized labor came into existance -- and is often in the uncomfortable position of not being able to escape those whims completely -- only to change masters.

The bottom line is that it sucks to be on the bottom, whatever the social/economic milieu.

-- Mal

[provis99]

11. interestingly enough,

this was probably the strongest argument the South had; that slaves were treated better than workers in the North because they were property, and owners look after their own property better than people they had merely "borrowed". The Northern abolitionists essentially had no response to that, and conceded the point.

[Zalatix]

12. Conceded the point? Wow.

I would have said that under Capitalism a worker could at least leave hostile working conditions.

However there is China, where indentured workers can't leave. Hmmmm.

[malthaussen]

13. provis99 is being slightly hyperbolic

... for the most part, abolitionists didn't choose to dignify the argument. But the capitalists would never have made the concession that you do: they would never admit to hostile working conditions.

And leaving was not, in any case, as simple as you might think: many workers were locked in dormitories, had their dress and behavior monitored, and if they did exercise their freedom to go elsewhere, found that somehow, there were no job openings for them... fortunately, there was a frontier to which they could ultimately escape.

-- Mal