Vengeance of the Serfs in the 21st Century

Rampant abuse of labor is frowned upon, and today’s serfs are a little more mobile, able to move from one lord to another. But, they always work for the same king.

Public Domain

By

Fourteenth century Europe was governed under a feudal system. The king owned all the land and portioned it out to the lords for money and military support. Knights were given plots and had to pay some proceeds and promise loyalty. At the bottom was the peasant, who worked and toiled and paid, and had very few options and absolutely no opportunity.

It isn’t completely dissimilar to the modern world. If you can swap kings, lords and knights with new titles, middle management, board of directors, CEOs, and the other alphabetic royalty in the corporate castles. Of course, rampant abuse of labor is frowned upon, and today’s serfs are a little more mobile, able to move from one lord to another. But, they always work for the same king.

One of the byproducts of the Great Mortality (the European plague also known as the Black Death from approximately 1346 to 1353 CE) was a dearth of peasants. A lot of them had died. There was still as much work to be done but there were a lot fewer serfs. This gave the serfs an opportunity…