Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

Reception of the Series and Related Works

• Commenters widely praise the blog for clear, source-heavy, systems-level history writing, especially on economics, logistics, iron/steel, and bread.
• Some find the Sparta series too emotionally charged but endorse most other topics.
• The author’s adjunct (not tenured) status is discussed as an entry point into critiques of academic labor structures.
• Comparisons to Guns, Germs, and Steel: some see similar accessibility; others call Diamond’s work “problematic” and useful mainly as a foil that historians critique in detail.

Peasant Labor, Myths, and Modern Analogies

• The popular claim that medieval peasants worked dramatically fewer days than modern workers is debated.
• One side points to academic estimates around ~150 workdays (at least for some English periods) and seasonal downtime; others argue this underestimates maintenance tasks and intense seasonal labor.
• Several say it’s implausible peasants worked less than modern farmers, given lack of mechanization.
• The series prompts comparisons to “technofeudalism” and to present-day life as still defined by rent and extraction.

Hierarchies, Inequality, and Political Design

• Many use the series to reflect on how hierarchies are deliberately or selectively shaped to funnel surplus upward, rather than being neutral accidents.
• Some say hierarchies emerge organically but are “curated” by elites; others insist this is mostly emergent, not conspiratorial.
• Long subthreads debate whether a “better system” could be designed today using psychology and game theory, versus the dangers of planned systems (with communism as a cautionary example).
• Large argument over campaign finance and propaganda: proposals range from banning or heavily capping campaigning, to public stipends, to strong term limits; critics warn these can entrench incumbents or are unenforceable.
• Another subthread disputes whether democracy requires radical equality of outcomes or only equal rights/opportunities, and whether any inequality inevitably erodes democracy into dictatorship.

Historical Shocks and Labor Power

• The Black Death is discussed as a turning point that raised peasants’ bargaining power by destroying labor surpluses, helping undermine feudalism.
• Some wonder if future demographic decline (with restricted migration) could similarly strengthen labor, though others note aging populations differ from post-plague youth-heavy societies.
• There’s speculation that lower populations might pop housing bubbles, but others counter that shrinking populations often concentrate in cities, keeping urban real estate expensive.

Modern Echoes of Feudal Relations

• Commenters connect peasant displacement to 20th‑century Black land loss in the US, arguing “efficiency” alone doesn’t explain who was forced off the land.
• Surplus labor trapped by concentrated landownership (temples, aristocrats, “Big Men”) is likened to today’s structures where rule‑makers live in abundance while others face precarity.
• Historical peasant mobility (“walking off the land”) is contrasted with modern employment bonds and penalties for early exit.
• UK leasehold is criticized as a feudal remnant, keeping some homeowners effectively as long-term tenants; others note it’s a minority of properties and often low-rent, though still used for profit.

Language, Authorship, and AI

• Some readers are annoyed by tense shifts and grammar but now see such imperfections as reassuringly non‑LLM.
• Others note that LLMs could easily be instructed to insert plausible mistakes, so this is no longer a reliable signal.