My limited study of feudalism indicates to me that feudalism made great sense to the extent that the land rents collected by the feudal lords was required to be used to support the local community by way of infrastructure and protection and the sovereign by way of privately provided knights in armor and troops. Feudalism became corrupt when the lords succeeded in pushing taxation off onto the people while they continued to collect the community created land rent. This effort really bore fruit in the 20th century until today few understand what the good old boys pulled off. Even my best good hearted liberal friends do not see any reason to make any distinction between taxes on labor and industry vs taxation on community created land values. Conservatives make a distinction except it is in reverse by especially hating property taxes that fall on land values. It does a feudal lord’s heart good to see such ignorance.

Today what we have is not capitalism but a corrupt form of feudalism. You have to admire the tenacity of the corrupt feudal lords who have virtually succeeded in reducing all the rest of us, the 90% at least, to a condition not unlike serfdom. We have the vote, we have civil rights galore, we have our guns in America, but none the less we are serfs.

At least we should expect our lords to live up to the standards set by the real feudal lords of old. No feudal lord was so stupid as to completely impoverish his serfs lest they rise up and smite him. The current lords somehow have forgotten this rule.