The New Nobility and Royalty

A few years ago, I got into fantasy. I loved it. So much magic, so much possibility. I could be a warrior going off and fighting for what was right, for what I believed in. I could champion causes and stare down villains. Not long after I found D&D and got to do all those things. I became the DM and soon I was working on worlds of my own, making good guys and bad guys, plots within plots, allies, and enemies to throw my players against. Eventually, I became a fantasy author. I have to tell you, writing my world M’Diro has been one of the highlights of my life.

It’s been 20 years, more now really, 25?

Something like that. Any way you look at it, I’ve spent long nights just thinking about all of it.

One of my favorite thoughts in those early days, a bit of wish fulfillment if you will, was what would I do if I were a real Lady, a real Queen, an Empress even. I built castles in my mind and ruled my people well, I made rules, some just because I could, and tried to make sure my kingdom, no matter how large or small, ran well. Miserable peasants after all tended to want to put Queens heads on pikes if they grew too restless. Yes, the pitfalls of being nobility was the balancing act of wealth without harming the little people that way I could have my parties without winding up an ex-monarch by being an ex-person.

I came up with a pretty good set of ideas, at least in my mind. See, the question that oft gets asked here is this, is it better to be loved or feared? Well, you don’t want them afraid of you, that’s for sure. See fear only goes so far. If someone is scared enough, they have nothing left to lose but their life, and death might seem preferable if things are bad enough. I knew this firsthand, because I was scared of my ruler. He only ruled me mind you because my food, shelter, my wellbeing was at his whim, and his whim I knew full well was fickle. Yet, given the opportunity, I would have gladly killed him. I didn’t hate him, quite the contrary, I loved him. But I was afraid of him. Afraid of the pain he brought, afraid of what he would do next.

It’s complicated, as such things often are. His method of rulership was all he knew and in his own way he was doing the best he could. All it would take is time and I would be away from him, I could endure.

Yet still I had the problem. How to rule and not be feared.

The simple answer, one I also knew from him, was to have them fear something worse than myself. A great trick, but only until they realized that wasn’t a real thing, only a scarecrow set in the field.

So, what was the answer?

I spent months on it before I hit upon an idea, the idea. Give them a choice. Feed them, make sure everyone had food, not a lot of food, I still needed them to work after all, and if they had enough, well they wouldn’t work the next day. Same with housing. Pay them! See if I paid them for working my fields, for tending my farms, for doing the work, then they would have the power to do whatever they liked. I could of course sell them back food, shelter, even medicine and they would be happy. They had done a good days work and felt useful, they had earned their place in the world and it would be their place, and I never even had to tax them because well people hate taxes. I would get all my money from selling the excess to other people, both from within and outside my lands.

I could even sell them land so long as they still came to work, and with the king still creating taxes, they would have to come to work so they could get paid.

It was so simple.

It hit me the next day at my job that that is exactly what had happened in the real world.

I went to work, and I clocked in. I used the raw material brought to me to turn it into food for others, I sold it, people ate, and I got paid. With enough pay I could go and buy whatever I wished, more food for me, a home, and go to the doctor when needed.

It was the perfect system.

I thought it was incredibly hilarious that people didn’t realize that their new liege lords were corporate mega giants like Walmart, McDonalds, Wendy’s, or Winn Dixie.

The more I thought about it, the less funny it became.

Think about it. They tell you how to dress, how to cut your hair, whether or not you can get a tattoo there, if you have to buy more than one pair of glasses or contacts, and so much more. If you don’t do as they say, they will “let you go” which you then have to put on your next application. Being let go for not obeying therefore limits your ability to work anywhere. Haven’t had a job in a few years? Good luck getting a job, you don’t have any work history for those years.

From one end to the others is a group of people who need us to do work, pay us less than that work is worth, sell us back what we made, tell us what we can and can’t do while in our own homes, who we can and can’t be seen with, and punish us for not obeying, and if we don’t put up with it we lose our home, our food, and our healthcare.

No one holds them accountable, and what few things that could be used to hold them accountable with they pay money to the government to make go away and pay talking heads to get you to agree with them.

In my dream scenario where I was the ruler of all I surveyed or, I paid my taxes to the king and the peasants never had to. Now they have the peasants screaming that their new lords shouldn’t be taxed by the king, and neither should they. They have them convinced that all of the suffering comes from the king trying to regulate the nobles into not making the people suffer.

We’re Serfs.

And they have you thanking them for it.

Adam Smith said Trade is the lifeblood of nations. He was right. From communism, to monarchy, to democracy, the countries trade back and forth. Capitalism was supposed to be the average person getting to be a nation unto themselves.

Too bad we don’t regulate it as nations do. Trade between nations is highly regulated. It has to be, otherwise war. But no, Your new nobles don’t want to be regulated. As such each one has gone from being a cow who can be milked by a nation to alleviate the tax burden of the people, to a predator taking out all its competition and preying on the people.

All because they have made sure you need them to live.

Once, long ago, we didn’t. We could just walk off and build a life. Woodsmen did it all the time. They accepted the risk when they did because they would no longer have the protection of the Nobles, but it was an option.

Now it’s not. All land is owned by some Lord or the King. If you don’t bend the knee to your masters they have armies of men that round you up and detain you, destroy what little bit of property you have, and force you to move if you’re lucky, or lock you up or kill you if you are not.

In short, America no longer has a choice, participate in capitalism or starve. Only we can’t. Even if the average American was able to make something new and exciting, something to add to the wonder of commerce, they can’t afford to do it. The best some of them can hope for is to make something one of these giants can buy off them, or to make the next viral app… and most Americans don’t know how to code.

While statistically improbable, most poor Americans know one truth, winning the lotto is easier and far more likely to happen than working their way out of debt.

While I still believe in capitalism, with the communing truth that most of our current jobs will be gone, and the desperate need for innovation, the looming climate catastrophe, to me the choice is clear: get rid of all largest Lords, tax the ones left, give UBI, and start back with small scale production and local ownership. The UBI will ensure that any idea out there that is good will actually start to happen, a new economic model can grow, and finally…

No more Nobles.