The repeal the 19th meme is funny but now I'm not sure that is as much of a problem.
The property requirement meant that only those with skin in the game were the ones who got to decide who governed. Without it we have paupers and indolents with the power to spend money that they did not earn or pay.
That inevitably leads to the death spiral from the famous quote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Obviously no political movement can form based on this principle since our current "conservatives" are too spineless to even fight for voter ID requirements. But at least it is within the overton window allowing for public discussion.
There's also that warning from the Family Compact (that I actually remember learning about in school) about how they thought democracy would devolve into the equivalent of a popularity or beauty contest.
We were supposed to laugh and scoff at their elitism, but I fail to see where they were wrong.
And maybe the big flaw of Western feudalism was in allowing titles to be bought by the merchant class.
And maybe where we all went wrong was in allowing the merchant class to have a say in anything.
Merchants can be very useful at distributing things to the public. However they should not be praised if they do that well, it's just them responding to public demand.
The worst case is when a merchant expends public demand, but wants more so they manufacture demand instead. Historically this is the "snake oil salesman" but in recent years it's just basic advertising and social engineering.
Yes, yes, only Feudalism will free us!
Feudalism, which is effectively what Capitalism replaced, was an authoritarian nightmare of inbred-authoritarian-aristocracies ruling by fiat for the sake of power alone. Fedualism's big failure is that it maintained the un-ending tyranny of bio-lenninst failures for millennia based solely on the fact that they were born. Heraldry existed as a useful way to disseminate human capital through multiple generations, but in the end, this system was so corrupt that it was nothing short of useless for the actual progression of human societies. It only existed to maintain itself.
This is why the black death was such a blessing in disguise. Slaughtering as many as it did, it repeatedly killed off swaths of worthless aristocrats and necessitated the expansion of capitalism where people could actually trade goods for mutual benefit, instead of desperately struggling against the interests of powerful guilds who did nothing but bicker and fight for power at the expense of literally everyone.
Even the concept of family was corrupted to no end, hence the inbreeding. Once aristocratic families created their own cosmopolitan global aristocrats, they found that maintaining that power was all that ever mattered, even if it meant fucking your sisters and cousins for political power. Any utility a family unit would have was wasted on the aristocracy.
The flaw of of Feudalism, was damn near everything. From power mongering, to social immobility, to multi-generational slavery, to inbreeding, to globalism. The reason it died is because it couldn't help but get every fucking thing wrong, and even murdering the entire ruling class wouldn't work because in a very short time, everyone would be making all the same mistakes all over again.
If you want feudalism, pledge all of your assets, your freedom, and the lives of children to Jeff Bezos and you might get an idea of why that shit don't fucking work.
Yes, but that's all what we have now, just in a different form. We are right at where your second paragraph is, with hollywood and politics interbreeding and making dynasties, etc.
So really, we need another real disease to wipe out all the elites again.
No, we aren't. Wealthy celebrities are nothing more than pawns and financial investment vehicles. When I say inbreeding, I mean, no shit, cousin fucking to the point of genetic abnormalities in the aristocracy being fairly common. We really aren't at that level. All of the current oligarchy's 'incestuousness' is figurative, not literal. Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush did not have a kid in order to maintain the power of the uniparty system.
What we have now is similar to the global aristocracy of old because that's what happens when you get internationalist tyrants together.
Our situations are very different.
Here, take a look at how Capitalism replaced Feudalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2gnxVhTci0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agPvpo3Qdsk
Well, I know that, and I also know that this is why the "eugenics" of "don't marry your cousin" is a thing. Yeah, that was probably THE biggest mistake, by people who had no concept of how heredity worked.
But the fact is, they're all IDEOLOGICALLY inbred, and are consolidating their power. We are HEADING towards a new kind of corporate fuedalism, where the illusion of voting for politicians is just that - an illusion, with everything being controlled by the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos of the world, and the hollyweirdoes and media acting like the priest class.
This reminds me of the article I read about Germany cracking down on Nazis. Raiding these peoples homes was framed as trying to maintain democracy and freedom, when in reality it was the opposite, it was cracking down on freedom.
Hollywood seeks to be the new priest class. The guardians of morality, behaviour, and correct thought.
One could even say that our current culture war is revolving around this priest class struggling to break the 'faithless'. But it only looks bleak because the merchant class is allied with the priests right now. If there were a way to sway the merchants somehow, perhaps we wouldn't be eager to ask daddy government to write new laws (example: legislature banning lootboxes).
You're taking him to literally. He means "the priestly class". Those who disseminate, propagandize, and enforce the will of the establishment / cathedral.