09-03-2018, 03:48 PM | #41 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
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At all feudal levels... at what point does a landed knights money stop and the money of his demesne start, especially if he’s buying his horse and arms out of the income from his demesne... which are his but required as part of his feudal duty? ...a baron, required to collect tax s for the king, pass some on, maintain roads, bridges, keep the peace, provide troops in war and find his own upkeep out of what’s left? At some point those two financial realms separate, but where is that point? |
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09-03-2018, 05:15 PM | #42 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
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In a hypothetical feudal system several owners will hold a given patrimony. The Crown will hold some lands as an absentee landholder; this was one of his main revenue sources. In England at least it was held that a King in peacetime should be able to live off of that (there was no such thing as peacetime as we know it back then of course, but there were times when no big campaign was going on). Rural nobles had their estates. Cities were likely to have a corporate relation to the King analogical to that of a noble. And anyone with enough clout to make a treaty with the king could get similar terms. In a sense only a sovereignity can hold real property because real property needs to be defended by force of arms. That is there is no fully allodial property in the English tradition. There are patrimonies that were given semi-allodial claims because that was a treaty with a conquered people or it is part of an endowment as with a university or religious organization. Semi-allodial claims would include tax benefits and internal self-government, heraldric and ceremonial symbols, and what can only be termed as "eccentricities". In fact they would really be just one step above a feudal title. The exception to that would be a Federal or Confederal system like the US where the subdivisions are supposedly the creators of the central government, or exist contiguously. It is hard to say whether or not a US State rules allodially, but it is easy to say that a county in the UK does not. Parodoxically the right to hold property needs a guarantor whether you call it a corporate state or a monarch, and so must always be limited. There is no actual time when it is more likely that the monarch will own the country and more likely that it will be corporate. The concept of "commons" is known at a fairly low tech level and several English villages had a portion of land that belonged to the village (I think they had a moot at regular times where they cast lots, or something to decide who could use a portion this year). I suspect that in Anglo-Saxon times it did not occur to them to think much about the question of who ultimately owned it. However in England probably the mark of when England was definitely a republic that happened to have a monarch rather then a monarchy that happened to have a parliament was somewhere in the Tudor and Stuart times. Certainly it seems to have been settled by the time of the early Hanovers. It must be taken into account that much of the assigning of property is legal fiction. If I remember, technically a Scottish chief owned his clan's land, however clansfolk do not seem to have behaved as serfs.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 09-03-2018 at 05:25 PM. |
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09-04-2018, 01:01 AM | #43 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
Long ago, when I studied business law, we were taught that as a matter of law in the United States, all land belongs to the sovereign—that is, the people of each individual state. The "owners" are merely people the sovereign permits to occupy the land; what they own is not land but estate. This was described as the justification for property tax (you have to rent the land from the sovereign), inheritance tax (you pay the sovereign a fee to assume ownership, just like a medieval serf), and eminent domain (when the sovereign needs the land, he can take it back). So as a matter of law the United States is "socialist" at least as regards land. In practice, not so much, as we have active markets for land and things attached to it.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
09-04-2018, 01:32 AM | #44 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
Sixteenth-century ... I think it was one of the Hapsburg reforms which everyone copied.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature |
09-04-2018, 10:15 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
That's rather after the Middle Ages. I tend to count them as ending with the Fall of Constantinople and the Reconquista (yes, it's forty years, but that's a short time historically speaking).
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
09-05-2018, 07:24 AM | #46 | |
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
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The aftermath was the rise of the common classes (as the army started to influence politics) then a lord protector in Cromwell, who whilst he governed a "Commonwealth" was effectively an emperor. After a while we got bored with not having Christmas and had to put out an advert for a foreign king to take the job (having messed up the line of succession by having an interregnum). As fodder for the discussion it should be recalled that Monarch on a royal progress would foist themselves on a member of the nobility and effectively eat them out of house and home. When they had exhausted their hospitality (in both senses) they would move on. In this case "the state" meeting their COL is the lesser nobility (who owe their nobility to royal patronage). During the civil war the king appointed officers who would then pay to raise a regiment at their own expense. Again the "state" subsidizing the King in the execution of his prerogatives. One of the contributory factors in the Kings ultimate defeat at the hands of his Parliament was that after the attrition of several years conflict the Parliament re-organised its remnants into a new-modelled army under a revised command structure. The King couldn't afford to "cashier" his officers (i.e. pay them the value of their mens' equipage) in order to restructure into a more appropriate command structure and as a result his army became top heavy with some regiments having almost as many officers as fighting men. Of course even the Kings most "personal" expenses were arguably state expenses. His meals were often public affairs with people doubtless paying bribes for the privilege of watching him eat. And I am still a Crown Servant. British police have a crown on their badge even though their duties are determined by the home office. Technically the Queen invites the leader of the party winning the general election to from a government. Our parliament sits in the Palace of Westminster. The Queen's representative (Black Rod) is formally denied entry into the house of commons in direct recollection of when King Charles entered the commons to arrest members of that house in breach of the constitution. Oh, and the Duchess of Sussex and spouse of the sixth in the line of succession was an American commoner. Perhaps you will not find her common now - continuing the princess bride theme. |
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09-05-2018, 11:02 AM | #47 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
Quote:
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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09-05-2018, 03:06 PM | #48 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
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A better approach, I think, is to model it as a system in which Status is a prerquisite of Rank.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
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09-05-2018, 09:29 PM | #49 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
Quote:
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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09-07-2018, 02:59 AM | #50 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Re: Cost of Living and Governance
Whatever he damn well pleased according to Charles I (Divine Right and all that) ;)
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cost of living, status, wealth |
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