The Vassals Handbook

[See the revised, extended, and in progress work at The Vassals Handbook page – subject to revision.] 

Lesson one – vassalism is capitalism wrought real

Out back is where we brutalize the people. Actually, out back is where we used to brutalize the people but times being what they are we brutalize them all around the corporate gardens now. Stan D. Garde is my name. Let the brutality games begin! For their own good. Brutality is what keeps people in line. Too bad we don’t set aside more often a special time and place for good old fashioned smashing. I miss it. The constant sort of torture we indulge in nowadays seems to me an inferior replacement. Well, nevermind. Let us not lament for the past but celebrate the present and future. Let us begin here, in the Vassals Handbook. The Incorporated Estates of Earth (IEE) commissioned me to write it.

Citizens are gone. They are now vassals. It happened in a funny way. All the banks around the world collapsed, broke. So the peoples’ money was used to refund all the banks. But don’t get any ideas. When the people buy the banks, do they not own them? Yes and no, but mostly and decisively no. You see, the people may properly own the banks (having bought them) but they sure as hell do not get to decide what to do with the money or how to do it. For that is not capitalism, and capitalism is what they bought. Clear? Clever? Clout. In capitalism, the people do not own the decisions. They are not the deciders. They are the consumers, the workers, and in a pinch they may be the funders. To review, the people may be the buyers and in theory the owners, but they are never ever upon any circumstances the deciders. In capitalism, the well-connected few are the deciders, the rulers who select candidates for office, who dole out funds for the campaigns, who provide the illusion of choice via sundry discrepancies for vassals to obsess over and pick between. Nothing more is meant to be.

Am I speaking over your heads, dear vassals? Let me see if I can put this in plainer words. The privileged few rule, the masses obey, even when the masses do most of the work, buy most of the stuff, and totally bailout the bankrupt rulers. That, my friends, is capitalism. Some used to call such a system Chinese Democracy before China was fully incorporated into the IEE. Vassalism is a more precise term, in my humble opinion.

Granted, technically, no land has ever practiced pure capitalism, because, unfortunately, pure capitalism is a self-exploding system – inherently wildly unstable. Totally free markets always lead to disaster – collapse of all sorts. Thus, regulation always exists to help curb catastrophe. And so it is, sadly, that contrary to common understanding, pure capitalism is almost as horrific as pure democracy. Demoscrazy, you know. We’ve had enough of that – we’ve seen where it leads – not to vassalage! which we much prefer. We prefer vassals to people. We prefer submission to rule. Capitalism is a nice thought, an ideal. But vassalism rules.

Oh I know you odd, broke, and broken spirits out there may think of vassalism as little more than slavery. We pity you penny-pinched souls who could not be more mistaken, more immoral. After all, slaves had no money and so could not readily repay their debts, let alone those of their superiors. That is the gross deficiency of the economic system of pure slavery. We had to replace it. Vassalism is much more efficient, much safer for rulers everywhere. It puts people in their proper place. All hail vassalism! See you at the wars!