Let's talk nobility!

Imagine! Grand palaces! Luxurious feasts! Dictating the course of world history with your whims! Conquering! Being a tiny king in your own right!

Yeah, I'm not talking about those guys. No counts or dukes or princes today.

I'm talking about the baron.

How much does a modest manor produce? Between 20 and 30 pounds sterling in Britain. In France, just over 20 livre tournois. Today, this purchases about $20,000 in goods. But we don't care about that. We care about relatives. I'll explain later. This is about 2500 days wages.

Converting back to modern money, 2500 days wages is about $200,000. So a manor produces about $200k/yr in income. How many manors does a baron own? Well, some own several. Some are even as mighty as a count or duke! But probably not. You see, the medievals did do censuses.

In the County of Champagne in 1252, the count had 1182 fiefs under him. 42% were held by knights, 39% were held by bourgeois, 15% were held by barons, and 5% by clerics. The average amount of manors for a fiefholder was ONE, regardless of the official title. Single manor.

But what about Britain? British barons are so important! Yeah, title deflation. Norman barons became major landholders in the new England. The English equivalent to the baron is the gentry. I will treat knights, barons, untitled lords, gentry and high bougies as interchangable.

So what did the barons do? So what are the barons? The barons are the people who rule your little shit village for the great lord, the Count, who can't be arsed. He's too important. And in times of trouble, they are marshalled for war. That was their original purpose.

There are tons and tons and tons of these guys. Whenever you hear a historian quote a stat like "France had 1% nobility" or "Russia had 2% nobility", by weight, that's all fucking barons. They're everywhere. The British peerage is a few hundred people. How many French?

About 200 Frenchmen were ranked Count or above in medieval France. That's not a lot of dudes. In fact, it basically rounds to zero. You may be noticing something similar in our lives. Millionaires and billionaires, perhaps? There are a few thousand billionaires ON EARTH.

We'll return to that and many other things later. The role of the barons was intricately tied to the feudal regime. They administered its lowest levels, managed its peasants, and fought its wars. So when early modern states formed with professional armies, they were gone.

Right?

In evolution, Nature doesn't come up with new organs willy-nilly. Limbs are adapted into other kinds of limbs. Systems are repurposed. So too with memetics.

The new system needed a labor pool to staff it. The baronage is dead. Long live the baronage.

Why are college students upset when they have to be baristas? One could say it's the income, which is terribly low. But they won't be tradesmen or factory workers either, even when those can easily pay high 5 figure incomes. No, they want particular jobs. What jobs?

Things like, I dunno. Doctor, Engineer, Lawyer, Banker, Bureaucrat, Professor.

What jobs did the baronage take up after the 16th century Crisis of the Nobility?

Doctor.

Engineer.

Lawyer.

Banker.

Bureaucrat.

Professor.

College degrees are minor titles. Always were.

So, recall the average incomes of a barony? $200,000? Familiar, eh? What are the average incomes of a midcareer BigLawyer, Software Engineer, or Banker? About $200,000?

Applying Piketty's 5% land value rule, we find a barony is worth $4mm. The average wealth of a US millionaire.

Funny how that works. And what did they need the money for? Maintenance of honors. So dowries, housing, and... college tuition.

It all starts to click, doesn't it?

All these figures are constant over time because the social-material relations have not changed in 1000 years.

This is the dead hand of feudalism reaching into the present. Material conditions remain the same because social-material relations remain the same, regardless of whatever ideological garnish you put on. Call them professionals, managerials, nomenklatura...

The Eternal Baron.

It is often said that the 19th century marked a new crisis of the nobility. And it did. But don't we still have doctors, lawyers, etc? Of course. The decline of the traditional landowner was a minor crisis to be sure. But it merely finalized the shift to professionalization.