The Franchise Should Be Limited

[Sasaki Kojiro]

That's really what they teach in norway?

[HoreTore]

That's really what they teach in norway?

I'm starting to wonder what kind of school you went to, actually, if you honestly believe the tenure contracts from 16/1700-ish represent freedom in any way whatsoever. If you do, might I suggest you actually read a couple of them?

[Papewaio]

Yeoman and arrows = slightly before 18th century. I was comparing it to its nearest rivals. Also most revolutions have had a base that was more educated then their forefathers. The French Revolution relied on the printing press. Tunisia on Twitter.

Over the long term a country that has a wider net of equality out performs a country that has less equality.

[HoreTore]

Over the long term a country that has a wider net of equality out performs a country that has less equality.

It's surreal that this needs to be said, it should be completely obvious.

Also, is the declaration of human rights just toilet paper to backroomers? Or is it just relevant when someone we don't like breaks them, we have no obligation to follow them ourselves?

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Yes, they changed the name of it as well as some of the details, but things continued much the same for several more centuries in Britain too.

And of course, the progressive changes from slavery to freedom in Europe was caused by the political involvment(in the form of revolts, mostly) of those sasaki proposes should have no say - and those he wants ruling the country fought tooth and nail to prevent people gaining freedom.

Fascism in a nutshell.

We owe our freedoms not to the efforts of the educated and superior, but to the blood shed by the ignorant and downtrodden.

Maybe you need to read some more English history?

Serfdom was on the way out by the 1340's, after the Plague. At the same time, there was increasingly freedom and literacy among the rural farming classes, and the urban population were essentially free because within the city it was the Guilds and the Burgesses that held power, not the King.

Even before that, English serfdom was not Russian serfdom, for starters they didn't work on feast days and saints days - take a look at a medieval liturgical calendar, the average English serf worked less than a modern wage-slave.

What's this rubbish about wanting to turn England into a "Hellhole"? More Marxist drivle - Marx was wrong, he read back the present into history rather than reading history to understand the present. I find the charactarisation of medieval Europe to be professionally offensive.

It was not that bad, life has never been that bad. It's a fantasy that people like to scare themselves with, as though medieval magnates were always violent, brutal sociopaths. Frankly, I think such historical fictions say more about the characters of the people who believe them than they do about the past or the present in general.

[Papewaio]

I thought the reasons why life was so bad had to do with lack of understanding of our environment. People's quality of life was impacted by disease far more then war or misrule.

Cities used to have a negative growth rate and required rural populations to sustain them.

Literacy plus improvements in medicine meant that people's focus could move from individual/small group survival to how to run the larger groups.

[lars573]

So your answer to history you don't like is to dismiss it? By all accounts, life in medieval europe sucked.

Being a peasant in any pre-industrail civilization would have sucked major gonads to our modern sensibilities. Context of the serfs lot in society is FAR more important. Would the lot in life of a serf be worse than that of a freeman farmer or a burgher? Or, until the black death, was the loss of freedom of movement (and others) plus the requirement to work the lords lands for free worth it for the protections and benefits that came with serfdom.

What's this rubbish about wanting to turn England into a "Hellhole"? More Marxist drivle - Marx was wrong, he read back the present into history rather than reading history to understand the present. I find the charactarisation of medieval Europe to be professionally offensive.

Marx correctly saw a pattern of subservience of the productive classes of society (medieval serfs and freemen, factory workers of his day, modern wage slaves and blue/white collar professionals) to the unproductive money classes (medieval feudal lords, factory owners of his day, modern CEO types). Now Marx being a product of the ugliest times of the industrial revolution could only see the dynamics of this relationship as being one of brutal domination and vulgar exploitation. When really the power dynamics were, and are, always in motion.

It was not that bad, life has never been that bad. It's a fantasy that people like to scare themselves with, as though medieval magnates were always violent, brutal sociopaths. Frankly, I think such historical fictions say more about the characters of the people who believe them than they do about the past or the present in general.

And in 500 years some pinko minded rabble rouser will paint CEO's of today as all being brutal sociopaths.

[Papewaio]

And in 500 years some pinko minded rabble rouser will paint CEO's of today as all being brutal sociopaths.

Or you could save yourself the wait and just read Steve Jobs biography

[Ironside]

English serfdom died out before 1500. Hence sasaki's point: and not in Britain.

The relation between the British upper class and its servants are quite revealing far into Victorian ages though.

And in 500 years some pinko minded rabble rouser will paint CEO's of today as all being brutal sociopaths.

It's one of the few professions where having sociopathic traits are benfical...

[HoreTore]

Being a peasant in any pre-industrail civilization would have sucked major gonads to our modern sensibilities. Context of the serfs lot in society is FAR more important. Would the lot in life of a serf be worse than that of a freeman farmer or a burgher? Or, until the black death, was the loss of freedom of movement (and others) plus the requirement to work the lords lands for free worth it for the protections and benefits that came with serfdom.

I do put it into context. I don't compare a serf/tenants life to my modern life, rather I compare it to the lives of those in power back then, ie. the nobility. Which means their lives were crap.

Fortunately for us all, the serfs thought the same as I do and proved to be an unruly bunch which forced the powers that be into making concessions, making my own life a comfortable one.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So your answer to history you don't like is to dismiss it? By all accounts, life in medieval europe sucked.

By all accounts?

Look me up GC - you'll find me on the University of Exeter's website under the Centre for Medieval Studies. Just because popular history says it sucked, doesn't mean it did.

I am utterly sick of this crap - the bald fact is that most of the things people "know" about the medieval period were invented during the Renaissance, like the frankly horrific slander that medieval scientists believed the world was flat.

Lars - Marx was wrong, because he, like you, assumed a static hierarchy and unchanging relationships. The serf may have been "owned" by the baron, but the baron was not equivilent to a 19th Century industrialist and in fact Marx actually compared the industrialist to the Guildmaster and the Proles to the Apprentices and Jorneymen in his historical works. That understanding is essentially flawed because the Journeymen became​ the Guildmasters.

[HoreTore]

Huh, I actually thought that misunderstanding was more modern, caused by college kids who misunderstood the Galileo story mixed with a little popculture...

Also PVC, I feel I must clarify my use of "crap". Medieval farmers enjoyed few of the freedoms I take for granted today, so in that respect their lives were crap. Kinda like the people I lived with in Tanzania - by "all accounts" their lives were horrible. Ask them, however, and they were quite happy. Just like I'm sure the medieval farmers were quite happy, if you don't count famine years.

[Hax]

It's still a long way from "medieval life was awesome​"

[lars573]

I do put it into context. I don't compare a serf/tenants life to my modern life, rather I compare it to the lives of those in power back then, ie. the nobility. Which means their lives were crap.

Fortunately for us all, the serfs thought the same as I do and proved to be an unruly bunch which forced the powers that be into making concessions, making my own life a comfortable one.

Which is totally the wrong way to go about it. Compare the lives of working people today with the lives of the CEO types. The workers lives are still crap.

Lars - Marx was wrong, because he, like you, assumed a static hierarchy and unchanging relationships. The serf may have been "owned" by the baron, but the baron was not equivilent to a 19th Century industrialist and in fact Marx actually compared the industrialist to the Guildmaster and the Proles to the Apprentices and Jorneymen in his historical works. That understanding is essentially flawed because the Journeymen became​ the Guildmasters.

I assume no such thing. Of course the hierarchies weren't static. But once the economic changes had finished we ended up with similar dynamics over time.

[Sir Moody]

Which is totally the wrong way to go about it. Compare the lives of working people today with the lives of the CEO types. The workers lives are still crap.

yes but not AS crap as the same comparison to the Serf's and their Elite class (the Nobility).

Our "working class" enjoys far more freedom and our "Elite" have far less (they are mostly not above the law now for example)

that said I am sure horetore would agree that while we have made progress and lives are not as crap we still have a ways to go...

[a completely inoffensive name]

Lars - Marx was wrong, because he, like you, assumed a static hierarchy and unchanging relationships. The serf may have been "owned" by the baron, but the baron was not equivilent to a 19th Century industrialist and in fact Marx actually compared the industrialist to the Guildmaster and the Proles to the Apprentices and Jorneymen in his historical works. That understanding is essentially flawed because the Journeymen became​ the Guildmasters.

My understanding is that the serf was not at all owned by the baron. Capitalism has a select few "capitalists" that control the means of production. They let workers use the means of production in return for the workers spending their money on the goods that they themselves produce. The goods workers produce are not seen as theirs and the capitalists are extracting wealth directly from the production line in this relationship.

European serfdom has the workers owning the means of production and the goods they produce, the barons simply tax the workers excess goods by essentially taking a cut for themselves and in exchange the barons provide basic governmental services like protection from raiders and other.....ummm I don't know the right word, because I don't know if the term "nation-states" apply to 12th century Europe. But you get the idea.

Idk if this is accurate or not, but from what I know, applying terms like "serf" to capitalism is wrong because they are two completely different modes of production.

[HoreTore]

The exact details of serfdom varied from place to place and decade to decade.

Still, serfs were owned. You could go technical and say the serfs was owned by the property which in turn was owned by the landowner, but meh. They could also be bught and sold along with the property. Typically, a serf was not allowed to gain any personal property; everything he "owned" was owned by the landowner. It wasn't the landowner who got a cut, it was the serf who got a cut; typically just enough to sustain himself. Cities became paradises to serfs - if they managed to sneak some of the produce away and accumulate a small amount of wealth, they would run away to the city. If they managed to hide in the city for a full year, they'd be free from their serfdom. If they got caught, they got executed, of course...

[Sir Moody]

My understanding is that the serf was not at all owned by the baron. Capitalism has a select few "capitalists" that control the means of production. They let workers use the means of production in return for the workers spending their money on the goods that they themselves produce. The goods workers produce are not seen as theirs and the capitalists are extracting wealth directly from the production line in this relationship.

European serfdom has the workers owning the means of production and the goods they produce, the barons simply tax the workers excess goods by essentially taking a cut for themselves and in exchange the barons provide basic governmental services like protection from raiders and other.....ummm I don't know the right word, because I don't know if the term "nation-states" apply to 12th century Europe. But you get the idea.

Idk if this is accurate or not, but from what I know, applying terms like "serf" to capitalism is wrong because they are two completely different modes of production.

not quite - to be fair your closer than Horetore

A Serf and his family were required to spend x amount of time working for his lord and in return he was protected and was allowed to maintain his own fields and keep some his own produce (the rest taken as tax) - generally the work would either be Mining or Farm work on the Lords farms

Serfs were allowed to own personal property and keep what they didn't pay in tax - generally however they would barely make enough to survive

They did however suffer from some bizarre taxes - for example in England if a Serf wanted to marry his daughter to a man outside of his lords territory he was required to pay the Lord for the right to marry and compensate for the lost hours of work (since the Daughter would no long be available to work for the lord)

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Also PVC, I feel I must clarify my use of "crap". Medieval farmers enjoyed few of the freedoms I take for granted today, so in that respect their lives were crap. Kinda like the people I lived with in Tanzania - by "all accounts" their lives were horrible. Ask them, however, and they were quite happy. Just like I'm sure the medieval farmers were quite happy, if you don't count famine years.

That's very qualified - don't forget that serfs have a guaranteed home and source of income - something people don't have today even in the most Socialist countries in Europe.

Serfdom was part of the Feudal system - where all means of production were ultimately owned by the State (Monarch) and then leased to tenants. One thing people forget about Feudalism was that it was essentially a decentralised system. The King owned everything, he leased to Tenants-in-Chief who leased to Tenants, who leased to sub-Tenants. The vast majority of serfs were under a rural knight they likely either knew personally or had at least met on Feast Days or at Court. Even the large landowners, such as the Berkeleys and the De Spencers visited their estates regularly and took an interest in the locals, often sponsoring the more promising young men to go to university, or taking them into service.

The exact details of serfdom varied from place to place and decade to decade.

Still, serfs were owned. You could go technical and say the serfs was owned by the property which in turn was owned by the landowner, but meh. They could also be bught and sold along with the property. Typically, a serf was not allowed to gain any personal property; everything he "owned" was owned by the landowner. It wasn't the landowner who got a cut, it was the serf who got a cut; typically just enough to sustain himself. Cities became paradises to serfs - if they managed to sneak some of the produce away and accumulate a small amount of wealth, they would run away to the city. If they managed to hide in the city for a full year, they'd be free from their serfdom. If they got caught, they got executed, of course...

No - fundamentally wrong. Serfs were not owned, slaves were owned, and the distinction was a sharp one. Serfs were not free, but that was because of the conditions of the lease they held, which they could not sell, and which required them to work their landlord's land as well as their own. In England at least a serf could become as wealthy as a free man by selling his surplus at market and using that to buy small freeholds. Eventually he might be able to buy his own land's freehold from his Lord (at a very high premium) and that way he could secure legal freedom.

The city thing is something I've never heard before, but it can't be true in England because Freedom of the City is still something granted, and not an automatic right. I am not a "free" man in that sense, although my father has a Freehold and as a graduate of a university I am officially outside the yeoman class, I'm still not a Freeman of the City of Exeter.

What you are describing sounds like the Reaissance's last gasp of the system on the Continent.

Have a read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

Oh - and because I have a big ego - I typed all that from memory, then I looked up wiki and low, we agree.

Edit: OK, found the bit about Borough Towns (not cities specifically). That does ring a bell now, pesky Anglo-Saxon laws I suppose. Nevertheless, how common that was is debatable and the key point is that the serf was within the Borough for a Year and a Day, not that he was away from his Lord.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I do put it into context. I don't compare a serf/tenants life to my modern life, rather I compare it to the lives of those in power back then, ie. the nobility. Which means their lives were crap.

Fortunately for us all, the serfs thought the same as I do and proved to be an unruly bunch which forced the powers that be into making concessions, making my own life a comfortable one.

Actually, with the exception of Czarist Russia: nope. It was the citizenry which proved the unruly lot. This is of course a matter of definitions, since by and large the original Serf status no longer existed when that happened...

Anyway you are probably right that the lives of Serfs were by all accounts, crap. PVC is wrong here: it is the crappiness and the difficulty of upward social mobility (especially when the best farmlands were exhausted and plots became very small due to generations of subdivisions via inheritance) which led to the mass exodus from France, Flanders and England to settle in- and cultivate the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Wales... Nobles would recruit in France and Flanders for instance, and provide upfront loans to pay for the serfs to up sticks, grant them the right to settle on some plots of land in their domains, grant them tax waivers for years until the new settlements were projected to be sustainable, grant them freeman status ... All to get them to come and cultivate their land, which they knew would in due time yield massive ROI even if it meant not being able to exercise as much power over your peasants.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

What date are we talking about here?

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well High Medieval and to a lesser extent Late Medieval, more or less. Eventually of course the newly settled places became starting points for launching ventures further away. As a rule of thumb anything in Germany called -dorf (or -dorp in Dutch) is very likely the result of this expansion, all the old Dutch polders were built this way, for instance.

[The Stranger]

Wow - what a massive simplification. I'm not surprised as it backs up your preconceived ideas.

Most people just collect information that back up their own position and overlooking bits that don't. Best overlook how the UK was one of the more progressive countries with labour. Perfect? Nope.

There are even fewer persons who approach the situation without preconceived ideas.

make that none.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well High Medieval and to a lesser extent Late Medieval, more or less. Eventually of course the newly settled places became starting points for launching ventures further away. As a rule of thumb anything in Germany called -dorf (or -dorp in Dutch) is very likely the result of this expansion, all the old Dutch polders were built this way, for instance.

Well, before or after the Black Death?

Even so, the fact that serfs could be tempted away from their lords' estates doesn't make their lives "crap" it just means they were at the bottom of the tree and there was room to move up.

I'm not saying it was a wonderful life in rural idyll, but I would think medieval serfs were better off than people during the industrial revolution. For one thing, they appear to have lived longer - Church records for most of the Middle Ages show people marrying in their early to late twenties, 26-28 being the most common irrc. That tells us that people weren't in a desperate hurry to breed and get their children to adulthood before they died.

[ICantSpellDawg]

We have a 2 party, first-past-the-post electoral system; built against the foolish notion that individuals are capable of governing themselves anywhere other than off of a cliff. Now, I think that individuals have the "right" to govern themselves - even off of a cliff, but power brokers also have the "right" to subvert the wants and desires of the lesser man - for better or worse - earned by their sheer power and the lack of anything resembling an objective universal/superlative morality. Is there a better way? Probably. "Democracy" is merely a tool of governments to reduce the people's frustration level using gimmicks and shiny objects - when things go wrong they feel like they only have themselves to blame. Pessimistic? Yes. Wholly inaccurate? Probably.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

It is true that recent evidence suggests the average medieval person was in better health that previously thought.

But it is worth remembering that most children never made it to adulthood.

Most of the research in the last 20-30 years has told us that we knew very little about the Medieval period and understood less, because we read back from when our records started (during the industrial revolution) and we believed what the Renaissance told us.

We now know that malnutrition and the resulting issues are the result of urbanisation - a largely rural population in Western Europe living off the land will be in generally better shape than an urban one with a similar level of technology. The average medieval serf in England's staple foodstuff would be oats or rye, possibly some wheat in places like Kent, supplemented by root vegetables, milk from cows, sheep or goats, cheese, some eggs, small game like rabbits, and the occasional fattened hog. There would also have been things like blackberries, which are rich in Vitamin C and would prevent scurvy.

This wasn't appreciated in the past because the Enlightenment myth of progress told us that we had moved forward in all ways since the Renaissance, when in fact we were moving backwards in some ways until the mid-19th Century.

Yes, there were famine years, in fact this year is a famine year - about 50% of England's crops failed this year - and it's conceivable that 700 years ago a lot of people would have died in the winter. Even so, the average peasant was better off than a factory worker in 19th Century Manchester or Birmingham - and taller too.

The mortality rate is certainly a fact - but it's also misleading. Most deaths occurred because of complications either during pregnancy or childbirth, or because of underlying conditions. If a child survived to the age of two it's life expectancy would jump dramatically, and would continue to rise until adulthood.

[HoreTore]

The founders were generally against the notion of political parties, but that didn't last very long.

I still think a multi-party legislature, with many parties that have many specific platforms, would be a vast improvement over our two parties which (due to a lack of competition) can avoid standing on a platform except when it suits their immediate political ambitions. I think we could avoid the stalemates that European multi-party systems are prone to by keeping our executive branch very powerful, but those powers need to be defined far more specifically than they are today.

The multi-party system is not the cause of the (few) stalemates you have seen in Europe.

First, we have Belqium. The issue in Belgium isn't due to multiple parties, but rather the countey being split in two, with the two sides unwilling to work with each other. Not because of politics, mind you, but because of the flanders/wallon-thingy. The other source of complications arises when it is a requirement for a new government to have a majority in parliament. In more refined democracies, like Norway, a new government doesn't need to have support, it just needs to not have opposition. Ie. it doesn't need 51% of the representatives to vote in its favour, it just needs to avoid having 51% voting against it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

The founders were generally against the notion of political parties, but that didn't last very long.

I still think a multi-party legislature, with many parties that have many specific platforms, would be a vast improvement over our two parties which (due to a lack of competition) can avoid standing on a platform except when it suits their immediate political ambitions. I think we could avoid the stalemates that European multi-party systems are prone to by keeping our executive branch very powerful, but those powers need to be defined far more specifically than they are today.

Only Washington and a few other were explicit against parties. The beauty of the Constitution is that Madison anticipated and built the system around the presence of parties. Before every state had even ratified it, founders were lining themselves up under the Federalists or Democratic-Republicans.

The issue isn't that there are only two parties the issue is that the current Representatives are too distanced from their constituents for the public to have control over their own congress.

1. Having Senators be elected by popular vote is silly. It makes the Senate a smaller version of the HoR, only worse. Instead of having 700,000 other voices shouting at your representative, you now have tens of millions.

2. Once the Senate returns back to being elected by state representatives, the Filibuster should either be abolished, or members must be present and talking to actually force a Filibuster.

3. The HoR is simply too small, and the number of constituents for a Representative must be at the most half a million people per rep. Ideally, it should be 250,000 per representative.

4. The Presidency is a joke. He doesn't control the economy. He can't magically make jobs appear with the right legislation. Yet, everyone is sitting around asking the President where all the jobs are.

5. The executive branch is only powerful because the public believes it to be so. The public treats the office of POTUS as borderline dictator status, able to change society and policy at his/her whim. What we saw in the debt ceiling fight was that Congress does and always has the final say in how the government is run, and only because people's low expectations of Congress, it is not tasked with tackling the problems that only Congress has the power to solve.

What we need is more emphasis on Federalism. Take away the public vote for all Federal offices except their local Congressman. Emphasize the importance of state, county and city elections to enact policies that you want done. This idea that if you want something done, you need to go to the Federal level and push it on everyone is silly.

[Kralizec]

The multi-party system is not the cause of the (few) stalemates you have seen in Europe.

First, we have Belqium. The issue in Belgium isn't due to multiple parties, but rather the countey being split in two, with the two sides unwilling to work with each other. Not because of politics, mind you, but because of the flanders/wallon-thingy. The other source of complications arises when it is a requirement for a new government to have a majority in parliament. In more refined democracies, like Norway, a new government doesn't need to have support, it just needs to not have opposition. Ie. it doesn't need 51% of the representatives to vote in its favour, it just needs to avoid having 51% voting against it.

Is it like Germany's sytem? Meaning, a vote of non-confidence can only succeed if it also appoints a successor at the same time?

Otherwise I don't think it's really different at all, and you're describing a "minority government". Which is perfectly workable until a majority in parliament is fed up and accepts a motion of no-confidence. In many countries (mine included) there's some sort of compulsive taboo against the idea of a minority government though, despite that there are plenty of precedents.

Well, before or after the Black Death?

Even so, the fact that serfs could be tempted away from their lords' estates doesn't make their lives "crap" it just means they were at the bottom of the tree and there was room to move up.

I'm not saying it was a wonderful life in rural idyll, but I would think medieval serfs were better off than people during the industrial revolution. For one thing, they appear to have lived longer - Church records for most of the Middle Ages show people marrying in their early to late twenties, 26-28 being the most common irrc. That tells us that people weren't in a desperate hurry to breed and get their children to adulthood before they died.

Probably so, because the industrial revolution was in some ways a revival of serfdom in its most awful sense.

Serfdom is usually understood as being a form of slavery or semi-slavery without the formal label. If we go back to Rome, the legal details of both institutions were different (most importantly, serfs were not "propery") but de facto they were quite similar. The word servi was used to refer to both slaves and serfs with no distinction. In the middle ages the legal specifics differed from place to place and time to time, but the similarity is that the peasants are not inherently unfree like slaves but still have no realistic opportunity to escape from their current social standing, or even their place of residence.

In the industrial revolution it was common practice for a factory owner to monopolise all the goods and services that the common man from the region would need. The laborers were dependent on him for income and were obliged to buy goods and services from him as well. These people, despite being under no restrictions under the law, did not have the means to just pack up and leave try to make a better life elsewhere. This pretty much continued until the late 19th century until laws were passed against this business.

Granted, that just proves that during the height of the industrial revolution life was really really bad. I admit that I don't know a lot about the daily life of commoners in the middle ages. Allthough my impression is that they suffered far, far worse under wars because the slaughter was more local and more indiscriminate.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Even so, the fact that serfs could be tempted away from their lords' estates doesn't make their lives "crap" it just means they were at the bottom of the tree and there was room to move up.

Yes it does not automatically mean their lives were crap, but the second part of the sentence deserves qualification: their prospects were so bad they were willing to migrate quite a distance with nothing to go on but a gamble. It was their big bet.

I'm not saying it was a wonderful life in rural idyll, but I would think medieval serfs were better off than people during the industrial revolution. For one thing, they appear to have lived longer - Church records for most of the Middle Ages show people marrying in their early to late twenties, 26-28 being the most common irrc. That tells us that people weren't in a desperate hurry to breed and get their children to adulthood before they died.

That is true. Skeletal remains alone suggest quite strongly that the Industrial Revolution was by far the worse catastrophe ever to befall the common man, as the 19th century Industrial Revolution people are the shortest by far. But you know where this leads to, by the same token (skeletal remains) Medieval peasants are worse off than their Hunter-gatherer ancestors too...