Feudalism never truly died.  It only changed form.  The lords no longer wear crowns, and castles have been replaced by boardrooms and government offices, yet the essence remains the same—an elite class extracting wealth and power from the productive masses.  The serfs of old were bound to the land.  The serfs of today are bound by taxes, regulations, and inflation, ensuring they remain subservient.

A defining feature of feudalism was the illusion of ownership.  The peasants worked the land, but the lord could take it at any moment.  Today, property taxes expose the same reality.  Fail to pay, and the state will seize what you thought was yours.  Income is no different.  Every paycheck is first claimed by the government, and what remains is steadily eroded by inflation.  Those who print the money benefit, while those who work for it suffer.  True ownership is an illusion.

The extraction doesn’t end there.  If taxation is the tribute paid to the new lords, regulation is the leash keeping the serfs in line.  Laws dictate where and how you can work, what you can build, and whom you can trade with.  The bureaucratic class, much like the feudal nobility, doesn’t produce value, it controls those who do.  Meanwhile, corporate elites, shielded from competition by the state, dominate industries and dictate the terms of economic life.  They don’t rise through innovation but through political favoritism, just as nobles of old secured their status through royal decree.

Debt tightens the chains.  Wages fail to keep pace with inflation, forcing people to borrow just to maintain a basic standard of living.  Homeownership drifts further out of reach, locking generations into perpetual payments.  The financial aristocracy profits, while the working population toils endlessly, not to build their own wealth, but to service their debts.  The modern serf doesn’t till the land for his lord.  He works a job to pay rent to a banking cartel.

The illusion of social mobility sustains the system.  A handful of exceptions—those who rise from nothing—are paraded as proof that the game is fair.  Yet, just as a rare peasant became a knight, these exceptions don’t change the reality of the system.  The state ensures that power remains with the established elite, enforcing policies that prevent true competition.

This is not the natural order of things.  It is an artificial construct, upheld by the belief that it cannot be changed.  Breaking free requires rejecting the illusion of state-provided security and demanding genuine freedom—true property rights, an end to inflation, the removal of regulatory chains, and the dismantling of statism.  Feudalism didn’t disappear, it was merely rebranded.  The chains may be invisible, but they are there.  It’s time to break them.

Reference

Murray Rothbard; Economic Controversies