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Cake day: April 28th, 2024

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  • Clergy is the one I would say most breaks the dichotomy.

    All the others listed still lack the title and privileges that come with nobility. There is some nuance I skipped over: different laws for urban citizens vs rural peasants. But a peasant could become an urban citizen by fleeing their land and living in a city for a year and a day, after which their former lord could no longer claim them.


  • If we’re going by the historical use of the term, yes.

    At the beginning of the early modern period, you had two classes: peasants and aristocrats. You were born into your class and that was that. But early industrialization lead to a funny thing; people who were born peasants, yet through owning things like mines or factories, had amassed enough wealth to rival (and sometimes surpass) the aristocracy. Aristocrats derisively refereed to these wealthy peasants as “The Middle Class”.

    If you were to show an aristocrat our present world, they’d tell you we’re ruled by their middle class.












  • I love having capital, now if only there weren’t all this pesky labor.

    Any meritocratic system becomes an informal aristocracy after a generation or two. And aristocrats are so notoriously good at understanding the systems that facilitate and keep them in power…