Lord of Elves

Sorry my NES died, started a much more successful one however,and if you join, ill give you a boosted start! (as a sorry!)

Where did the disorder come from? Besides which, its almost impossible to have a viable feudal state in the absence of a clear and present military advantage by the nobility over the peasantry. The run of the mill barbarian war-band where everyone could take up arms didn't have that so you end up with a give and take relationship. Likewise, decentralisation only works if each Lord can control a parcel of land small enough that he can defend but rich enough that he can live off it. Both of these are exacerbated by and help cause the decentralisation of central authority. Eventually you end up with a state of play where the only important thing is the trust you can place in the people you know. The title King is utterly worthless without the support of you nobility. And its far easier to get along with your nobility if you personally know them. You might only need to know the Barons to get everyone else to come along but only because the Barons know the Knights and so forth.

(3) the switch away from urban centres and centralised regimes exacerbated all these decentralising tendencies: soldiers were no longer paid out of central accounts had their own power base and could actively resist the Crown on their own accord.

The system began to develop even before Rome fell: later Roman Emperors typically gave out rights to tax land in exchange for which the state got a cut. It was partly in response to a collapse in central governance but in large part it was just an extension of existing practices to their logical conclusion. Broadly speaking this system lasted past the collapse of the Roman Emperor. It continued in Italy for some two hundred years and in Spain for three hundred. Even in Gaul it continued for quite some time. The basic technological argument for feudalism is three-fold: (1) technology favoured professional soldiers and defence, its expensive for chain mail and even rudimentary earthworks became proof against assault for instance (2) advances in agricultural technology made it possible to derive a permanent living from the land, this made it attractive to convert the right to tax into a right to the land and people (the tax base) and

... You could have just looked at the sources yourself, you know.

Go on Aim please. Thankks

And before you go gallivanting around proclaiming equivalence between what they said and your situation you would need to look at what they contrasted it with.

Weber (1914))

..the fief is defined as any grant of rights; especially of land use or of political territorial rights, in exchange for military or administration service.. these involve the creation of hereditary livings which establish either a patrimonial dependency or at least a liturgical attachment to obligations and thence to the land.

But I'll humour the request in (A). Take: Smith (1777):

The occupiers of the land were generally bondsmen [serfs], whose persons and effects were equally his [the Lord's] property. Those who were not bondsmen were tenants at will, and through the rent which they paid were often nominally little more than quite-rent, it really amounted to the whole price of the land. Their lord could at all times command their labor in peace, and their services in war. Though they lived at a distance from his house, they were equally dependant upon his as his retainers were lived in it. But the whole produce of the land undoubtedly belong to him, who can dispose of the labor and service of all those whom it maintains.

If you can't see how you assumed a priori that you opinion was factually valid then I'm not going to teach close reading for free. Furthermore, the basis of your whole society is predicated upon (A) a false understanding of what feudalism is (B) a complete lack of understanding about the antecedent factors leading to it and (C) a basis in theory that is objectively wrong and completely ******ed.

(A) Can be solved by reading something anything of your own. (B) by the same. And (C) by I have no idea because honestly: You can't teach critical thought, common sense or logic.

Here's how reality works. You state something ridiculous at school as fact. You get a B. You state something ridiculous at University. You fail. You state something ridiculous in the street. People call you names. You do it on the internet. People will call you out for it. Simply put: your opinion is not automatically valid.

Furthermore, demanding tolerance, understanding and acceptability on the basis of that is silly in the extreme. You defence was flawed and your implementation is silly. All I got annoyed about was the anarchism and the constant Anglo-Saxon thing. But to then defend it with something utterly ******ed doesn't help one iota. I dunno, next time point out other peoples faults or something. Rather than make up something calculated to insult people.

"Hey I'm smart, I'll say this stupid response"
"Your wrong and demonstratively so"
"No, I'm not your stupid/trolling/ignorant/whatever and I'll condescend you for calling me out!"
"Right, whatever, your wrong"

But as to why I disagree. Simply put because its wrong. Far smarter men than either you or I have fulminated on these questions and have arrived at a consensus which your at odds with. I'm sure you'll whine and moan about "mob rule" without offering anything factual to back yourself up. Fly up the banner of independent thought. I don't particularly care. But if someone disagrees with you and actually you know offers some sort of factual or methodological basis for disagreement don't act like an arrogant git and rely solely on your opinion as an unassailable truth.

Nevertheless, history doesn't grow out of a fit of a slip of the mind or force of will and it most assuredly doesn't just appear its an organic developmental process that builds upon the mistakes and successes of the past. You don't suddenly erupt into Feudalism or the nation-state or even states without first building up towards them. There isn't a single 'God given' path for development: you can leap around from a Kingdom, to a Republic, to an Oligarchy, to an Empire and then into nothing. But there are rules. You don't leap suddenly and abruptly to a Feudal state or to a Communist Dictatorship in 4000BC. Its ******ed and it deserves derision.

History doesn't work like you suggest. There were thousands of factors: technological, economical and so forth that acted to create Feudalism. The growth in the strength of fortifications relative to the weapons used to siege them gave local magnates substantially more power viz. a viz. the Crown and worked to frustrate efforts to centralise power. The invention of the deep bit plough allowed for greater population densities by allowing Europeans -- particularity the French and Germans -- to use the deep loamy clay-ridden soil properly. That alone increased agricultural productivity by a significant margin (perhaps 30%) and allowed for previously unworkable areas to be bought under cultivation. The Fall of Rome and the collapse of trade helped de-urbanise Europe and turn it towards the manor and ultimately predicated against the growth of large cities for the next half a dozen centuries or so.

If you can't be bothered to read any political theory and if you want to believe that your opinion is sacred and above reproach and ridicule that's fine. If you furthermore want to believe that my opinion (and it isn't my opinion only because its broadly held across scholarly disciplines) is a priori any less sacred that yours please continue to do so. You look like an arrogant ignorant git already and I can't save you from that.

But if you want to slink off and rethink something you seem to hold despite all evidence scholarly and evidentiary in basis that's fine: everyone makes mistakes and we all wish the better for you if, at a later date, you demonstrated you had internalised the criticism and worked around it. But at the end of the day I'm not the fellow cultivating a persona that even some of our better natured nesers have written off as annoying, vapid, silly or just plain foolish without any promise of progression. That's your job not mine.

Told you I kill NES's.

Hey man, I just checked out your second story in my NES and it says your god lives in a separate plane of existence than everything else. I'm sorry, but I'd prefer it if everyone was in the same plane of existence. Hope this doesn't mess up your plans too much.

oh haha, I'm sick from school today.. (been like this since THURSDAY) so I have time to read it

Hey dude you should invite me to your NES group thing, when you make it I'll deffintly join seems cool even though i've never played fallout before...

F to the YI my aim is Stratocast Floyd if you need it.