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356 No. 356
Fuedalism: Will the apocalypse bring it back?

Here's the issue. Let's say you're a doctor. There's a cataclysm and somehow you survive. By the way, if it's some kind of mass epidemic, the doctors will probably die first since they're right on top of the disease (but that's another issue).

Anyway, you're a doctor. You heal someone's leg. How do they pay you?

If there's not much around (a destructive apocalypse), trade works just fine: a can of beans, some bullets, whatever. But what happens in the event of a mass die-off that leaves a lot of goods behind for the taking? The only thing to offer is labor.

So you tell the doctor "Hey, I'll make a vegetable garden for you" or something. You're trading labor for services.

The tl;dr of it is this: how long can the doctor's trade be supported by labor? How long until we're back in a feudal system ran by "lords"?
>> No. 358
Eventually you'd have a ruling class of people who were engineers, doctors, professional soldiers, etc. working together to maintain order over a lower class of people who need their skills.

In that case, you'd want to apprentice yourself out to the doctor. Offer to be his assistant in exchange for learning how to fix people. After awhile you'd get good enough at digging out bullets and curing staph infections that you could rise to a position of rank and no longer have to work because you'd have an assistant doing all your dirty work.

tl;dr a government of skilled workers and professionals doesn't sound that bad.
>> No. 359
I don't think it would bring back feudalism, moore like good old fashioned tribalism mixed with maybe a little bit of ethno tribalistic tendencies we see in today's street gangs
>> No. 360
Oh my God Jenga I can't read that post that image keeps making me laugh
>> No. 361
The intial reaction would be tribalism of some sort, but as things stabilize and population growth occurs, the power dynamics would change. Once the basic question of survival is answered, politics will enter the picture as those with more meaningful skills will begin to be able to assert political weight against those with less meaningful skills. Farming, while important, will not be seen as valuable as healing. Organization will become necessary, thus leaders will emerge in one fashion or another. This could lead to feudalism since tribalism doesn't seem capable of scaling to the level of townships or nation-states.


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