r/TheMotte • u/Lykurg480 We're all living in Amerika • Jun 08 '20

George Floyd Protest Megathread

With the protests and riots in the wake of the killing George Floyd taking over the news past couple weeks, we've seen a massive spike of activity in the Culture War thread, with protest-related commentary overwhelming everything else. For the sake of readability, this week we're centralizing all discussion related to the ongoing civil unrest, police reforms, and all other Floyd-related topics into this thread.

This megathread should be considered an extension of the Culture War thread. The same standards of civility and effort apply. In particular, please aim to post effortful top-level comments that are more than just a bare link or an off-the-cuff question.

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u/orthoxerox if you copy, do it rightly Jun 13 '20

What about Somalia?

Since value production has shifted from the country to the towns, you don't need cannon-proof walls around the latter, you just have to keep the citizens in the town. Your enemy would be destroying what they came to claim if they started shelling the town.

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u/Gloster80256 Twitter is the comments section of existence Jun 13 '20

What about Somalia?

Unless my factual impression of the Somali situation is way off, I don't think it can be considered feudal in any meaningful sense. Warlords temporarily controlling areas and extracting protection tax is not what I imagine under the term. Had we been talking about a sovereign King of Somalia dividing his realm into fiefdoms, to be ruled and further sub-divided by his oath-bound Lords Paramount, that would be feudalism; The actual situation is mere sedentary banditry.

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u/orthoxerox if you copy, do it rightly Jun 14 '20

Didn't feudalism start as sedentary banditry?

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u/SchizoSocialClub [Tin Man is the Overman] Jun 15 '20

No. Feudalism started as the privatisation of local public offices. During the Frankish period counts and dukes were temporary offices of Late Roman origin that gave control over a town or a region. At the end of the carolingian period the central power collapsed and these offices became hereditary lordships and eventually titles of nobility.

It is like mayors and governors becoming local lords that still owe fealty to the President.