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0 pointsethbr04y ago0 comments

How would you describe the post-Carolingian economic organization of Europe?

What I was casting about for was the earliest example of innovation-suppressing economic subordination by force, over a wide area.

The Achaemenid (or later Abbasid) seem have featured more individual freedom, with regards to innovation, and less maximally-taxing policy to redirect economic output to ostensible land owners.

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lvass4y ago

I'd suggest reading Susan Reynolds' Fiefs and Vassals. It's a very complex topic and not fit for this thread at all.

ethbr0OP4y ago

If your contention is that feudalism is an inaccurate lense through which to view medieval Europe, then okay.

But the taxing and redirection of excess economic output, accomplished through ownership and lending of land, leading to an underperforming history of innovation, seems borne out by the history of Europe, regardless of the intricacies or framework through which it's viewed.

And that seems pretty on point for exactly what everyone is decrying with regards to consolidation into conglomerates in the tech sector.

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