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Comment on Gary Stevenson: 'Tax wealth or we'll return to the feudal age'

UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Even worse at least the local noble was local and would usually invest within their community instead of what we have now where they barely have to see us.

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UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Uh…

Medieval robber barons most often imposed high or unauthorized tolls on rivers or roads passing through their territory. Some robbed merchants, land travelers, and river traffic—seizing money, cargoes, even entire ships—or engaged in kidnapping for ransom.

I mean, we have a kind of tentative re-implementation of this in the US/Iran fight over the Strait of Hormuz. Also, with the vision of the Network State professed by Silicon Valley elites. And then there’s the Trump economic plan of high tariffs and walled-off borders, which seems to echo the Israeli strategy of segregated micro-communities and settler expansion into neighboring enclaves.

Idk if I’d call any of this “investment” in the neoliberal sense. Much of it seems to involve rent-seeking through enclosure and extortion. There’s no real value-add to any of it.

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