What's the difference between feudalism and capitalism ?
This is a serious question.
I look at the USA and see that it really has done only one thing consistently well for the last half century and that thing is making rich people richer.
I see feudalism in a system which is labeled as capitalist.
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For now one difference is the amount of mobility and the mechanisms of mobility. If they had books back in feudalism none of them would be titled like "How to Get Ahead".
However, capitalism is producing both more and more significant dynastic wealth as money concentrates in a smaller proportion of the population and as the state-corporate complex becomes more corporate owned and hence more responsive to those concentrated interests. There are going to be more poor people and there is typically less mobility in the poorer classes as a feature of that class.
You can almost see this in real time. Someone like me in my mid 40s has seen times where good jobs seems to be falling off trees. Then 2008. Now all these people have jobs where they are delivering things to the remaining upper and middle classes, jobs with no benefits where so much risk and expense is offloaded onto the worker. Then there are trends in social media highlighting "nepo babies", people noticing that certain people are just given everything while they work their ass off for the privilege of being well fed enough to continue to work their asses off. Scams are out of control as criminals and bankers alike are involved in some kind of cannibalization process. The super rich are getting richer but there are less growth assets to buy so they are buying all the houses so people are eventually just aren't going to be able to have any assets unless they were born into them. Some economists have predicted we are entering into an era of neo feudalism.
This is a serious question.
I look at the USA and see that it really has done only one thing consistently well for the last half century and that thing is making rich people richer.
I see feudalism in a system which is labeled as capitalist.
Is the U.S. still a true capitalistic economy anymore ?
Started around 1998 ?
https://www.barrons.com/articles/federal...
In September of 1998, the Federal Reserve went to unprecedented lengths to rescue the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management and avert a global financial meltdown.
For Wall Street, it was a turning point for risk-taking. After this, there was a growing perception that the Fed, by intervening to save systemically important institutions, was protecting the stock market from big declines.
Then-chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, confirmed an “unwritten contract with Wall Street that committed the Fed to intervene to halt market declines,” says economist Edward Chancellor, author of 2022’s The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest.
And the Fed has made good on that contract ever since.
As LTCM’s 25th anniversary approaches, critics say the problem is that everybody knows the Fed will do everything in its power to avert a financial meltdown. It creates a moral hazard: Investors, with little fear of losses, engage in reckless risk-taking. This creates bubbles (in stocks, housing, everything) that burst and start the cycle all over again.
“Greenspan and subsequent Fed chairs have never seemed to realize that excessive financial asset inflation (i.e., financial bubbles) is as damaging to the economy as is excessive real asset inflation,” the financial analyst Richard Bernstein said by email.
Now doesn’t mean I am 100% against what they did .
Some actions like 2008 was necessary but many more wasn’t , dating back from 1998 to 2023.
It's all a ponzi scheme .... the tortured acts to keep it going only make the inevitable crash worse.
Homelessness went up by a record 18% in 2025 and proto-villains like Jeff Bezos are starting investment funds to purchase residential real estate while he curbs the freedom of journalists at the Washington Post.
I guess some people look at Lex Luthor and see a role model as a feudal lord.
Feudalism is a decentralized system of governance where the populace is divided into distinct classes, usually based on an agrarian economy and land ruled by vassals of a monarch. However, the historical European feudal monarch is a far cry from his later absolute counterpart. Not due to ambition, but simply due to how fragmented the lands are. Countries as we think of them today, does not exist in Europe at that time.
In Europe it was eventually replaced by the autocracy (the absolute monarch), perhaps best exemplified by Louis XIV replacing the power of nobles with state officials serving the crown. Thus, he centralized all power to his own hands, as immortalized by his own words: "L’état, c’est moi" ("I am the state"). This idea of sovereign status ("the divine right of kings") will in coming centuries mold into the idea of the sovereign state.
Perhaps somewhat ironic given the topic of this thread, one of the big reasons feudalism was replaced was due to a wealthy middle-class who opposed a cacophony of different nobles with different laws or different interpretation of laws.
It is under the age of absolutism we first see mercantilism, and later capitalism replace the economic systems of old. With the stability of the central state, industrialization and the age of the worker, we see the idea of private property gaining traction. Corporations as we know them today start to appear and the rest is history.
So, the answer to the rhetorical question: What IS the difference between feudalism and capitalism? Pretty much everything.
Now, I understand that the question is rhetorical and that feudalism is used pejoratively. However, feudalism even when used insultingly, best describes a system of "tiny lords", each in large part making their own rules of law and transaction. Capitalism does not work very well in such circumstances, it rests on the centralized state. One can imagine driving a semi-truck through a region ruled by semi-independent warlords to realize why.
Now, there is actually a group of wealthy dingbats who seemingly want to replace the current system of the sovereign state with the decentralized city-state and govern it all with technology and unfettered libertarianism. Examples include the
It's all a ponzi scheme .... the tortured acts to keep it going only make the inevitable crash worse.
Homelessness went up by a record 18% in 2025 and proto-villains like Jeff Bezos are starting investment funds to purchase residential real estate while he curbs the freedom of journalists at the Washington Post.
I guess some people look at Lex Luthor and see a role model as a feudal lord.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess your life hasn't worked out the way you planned. There's nothing wrong with that, mine hasn't either in many ways. But I highly doubt the reasons have anything to do with capitalism, and blaming capitalism isn't going to provide any solutions.
This is a serious question.
I look at the USA and see that it really has done only one thing consistently well for the last half century and that thing is making rich people richer.
A measly 50 years and all you see is Rich people getting Richer?
Brother, you need to learn to open your eyes and expand your knowledge.
You need to get off the internet and go talk to some real human beings outside of your perpetually-triggered circle of communist acquaintances.
Peasants living under feudalism had a slightly harder time turning their fortunes around.
If you stop being such a Debbie Downer for 5 minutes and just look around, you'll see countless examples of people who grew up in very humble circumstances and managed to rocket up the socioeconomic ladder.
If you are of average intelligence and can behave yourself, it's pretty easy to carve out a nice little piece of the American pie for yourself. If you're willing to get dirty from time to time, you can even get yourself a place near a lake and fill your 4 car garage with some fancy toys without any higher education costs.
Maybe I'm biased after the last however many years in real estate and construction, but half of the people I deal with are damn-near ******ed and they still own second homes "up north" with every recreational toy you can imagine.
Step 1: Learn a useful skill
Step 2: Sell said skill to willing buyers
Step 3: Show up when you say you will, and do what you said you would
Step 4: Cash fat checks
My in-laws grew up hunting and eating squirrels from the back yard for dinner, but hustled and saved for 35 years and now they spend a third of their time traveling the world. They were extremely frugal people. Far more discipline than I'm capable of, for sure, but it worked out for them.
There is no shortage of "new money" in capitalist America. They're out there working and spend their off-time enjoying life, not bitching on the internet about how everything sucks.
Homelessness is a not a lack of housing problem. It's a lack of discipline problem. Most are homeless by choice, whether you want to admit it or not.
You can pick drugs and the streets, or stay clean and have shelter. They choose drugs. Not my problem.
I think I pinpointed the problem.
Step 1: Learn a useful skill
Step 2: Sell said skill to willing buyers
Step 3: Show up when you say you will, and do what you said you would
Step 4: Cash fat checks
This all requires a lot of initiative and work. Feudalism is way better than capitalism if you just want someone to tell you what to do.
I think I pinpointed the problem.
This all requires a lot of initiative and work. Feudalism is way better than capitalism if you just want someone to tell you what to do.
pretty sure the most menial job where you just execute orders on minwage in the USA allows you to live far far far better than a farmer lived under feudalism anyway
But those farmers only really work worked for 12 hours a week. The rest of that time was spent on personal projects and frolicking in the countryside. Don't believe me? Just ask reddit.
Feudalism... Small scale, Local
Capitalism... Large scale, Macro or Global
