Submitted 9 hours ago by thal3s@sh.itjust.works to [deleted]
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/a3635360-1e9a-4603-8659-d4c2c102345c.jpeg
(TikTok screencap)
In the middle ages you didn’t file taxes.
You paid whatever your lord’s tax man said you owe when he showed up at your door with his goons.
And the amount he demanded might not be related in any way to the king’s or even your lord’s laws.
Nope. Whatwasitsname, that piece of wood for control, which was also at the same time for bookkeeping. Was a clever system.
Yes, instead we have gangrene, leptospirosis, trepanning, faith healing, no education unless you’re clergy, forced labor for 95% of the population, a life expectancy of 40 if you’re lucky…
Oh, and taxes! still got those. Have to pay for Richard’s crusade, you know. Congratulations on being conscripted as a peasant spearman, now get back up and stand in line with the rest of the fodder.
Yup. If we’re going to romanticise non-modern life, we should probably look to the hunter gatherer San people of South Africa. They are considered one of the most peaceful cultures and hardly had any previous records of conflict (except in the 1970s and '80s but that’s a long story).
I don’t think they used that word for leptospirosis yet
You’re right.
They just shit themselves to death.
“Work in the morning? We are not Lords, our work starts long before the sun rises!”
oh thank god, it’s just infections, disease, pooping in a buket and dying a violent death
My fingers feel….feel like wood.
Pretty sure filing taxes (taking all of 5 minutes) is a heck of a lot simpler for me than for any medieval peasant or minor nobility.
I dont have to fill out any complicated forms; I just have to give them like 3/4 of the produce grown on my farm. 🤷♂️
The amount (usually much less - unless there was some marauding army nearby) aside, it was more complicated than that. Taxation was delegated across a hierarchy of various stages; at each stage a mixture of negotiation, deception and coercion would be used to determine the taxation amount. The lowest-level tax collectors typically worked akin to a mob protection racket, and their own livelihood depended on extracting a surplus above what their employer (typically some noble) demanded.
Certainly substantially less transparent and simple than clicking through an online form in a few minutes.
you might think that…but you’d be wrong.
*proceeds to die of diharrea*
Is that worse than diarrhea?
diehardrea
Okay, Henry of Skalitz. May I have all the things you robbed from me while I was out cold back please? Also tell Hans to go fuck himself.
I yearn to return
To the disease part? Or the waking up when the rooster crows an hour before the sun rises to start your day? or still paying taxes by feeding a landowner with all you make?
But don’t worry, you can’t read, so you won’t know what the meme says.
Yes all of it. Give it all to me
zephiriz@lemmy.ml 1 hour ago
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