I ran across a new term today: neo-feudalism.

neo-feudalism is the state in which we run our butts off on our hamster wheels everyday to the ends of being "another day older and deeper in debt", while the banks reap the benefits of our hard work through tax sponsored bail outs.

Meanwhile, these same banks then turn around and foreclose on any average joe who looses his job and can't find another one quick enough. Now, we can argue about the average joes being over leveraged and not planning well enough ahead and therefore deserving their ends, however that misses the point that the system is set up, by those at the top, to pump the value of our daily sweat up hill.

The income gap in america is at an all time high- the top 10% of us takes home something like 49.7% on the national income. (and this is from data garnished in 2007). We know that it has only gotten worse from there.

The truly sad part about this is that the other 90% of us has made ourselves dependent upon this hamster wheel running system, in hopes that someday we may work hard enough and prove lucky enough, to join the top 10%.

Maybe we should have stayed on our family homestead, milked our family cow, grew our veggies to sell at the farmer's market. But somewhere the American dream was marketed to us- and we thought that if we just took out 5 years of student loans, then a mortgage and a car payment or 2, that we would be all ready to get that high paying career and hamster wheel our way to the top, while having fun on the way.

10, 20, or 30 years later, coughing from the smog while sitting in the traffic jam... we had an epiphany that this wan not fun, and that there was no way in h*ll that you are clawing your way to the executive positions, because the executive has a son who just got married and joined the company. So why should you sit in a traffic jam, just to kiss their butts?

Maybe it is too late go back to our family homestead, having sold it generations ago for the chance at fortune, but it is not to late to have a garden. Maybe it is too late to not take on that massive mortgage, student debt, or car loan, but it is not too late to cut your expenses, downsizing your homes and cars.

The only way to avoid serfdom is refuse to be a pawn in the neo-feudalist society. Have your own land, owned by you (and not a bank), grow things, make things, use it well. reduce your needs for cash. Build friendships and neighbors

In descriptions of a perfect society there are 2 things that stand out to me.
1. that there was no poor among them
2. that every man shall eat the fruit of his field

I think those 2 items are interrelated. I think the idea of a jubilee year every 50 years is another way of maintaining a non-feudal society. In the jubilee year, not only was debt forgiven (any that lenders still allowed out at that time) but also their land was restored back to them. Everyone again had land they could grow on all they had to do was show up and claim it.