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Study also finds that Sun rises in East, that Earth is not flat, and reveals many other ground-breaking discoveries.

Reality says

Marxists and socialist revolutionaries have stigmatized "Feudalism" due to their desire for a big new bureaucracy that would open up many new bureaucratic economic monopolies for their "over-educated" "intellectuals" with little marketable skills

Feudalism was marked by having fortresses - most of which were not made with stone and thus do not survive - every few miles, with a petty tyrant lording over people.

This is secretly what many of the Hans Hermann-Hoppe variety want but are very bad at concealing.

Reality says

Ironically, attaching serfs to particular land would actually take place when governments own all the land (and pension and healthcare, etc.)

Feudal lords had personal ownership of the land, and it was inherited just like any other family wealth. It was better described as private government. They also frequently fought each other over boundaries. One of the reasons for the very slow drive towards centralization is that violence was so endemic, even the Feudal Lords themselves wanted a higher power to appeal to.

Reality says

The supply of land is not at all fixed in the context of market utilization of land.

A land, rather than property tax, is the best way to drive best use. It also compels Density when Density is the best use, rather than a cabal of landlords manipulating the system for their benefit by restricting density, since the land value and thus tax would rise higher than the current inefficient use (say, one SFH instead of a triplex).

Reality says

. Formal school "education" does poison the mind. Here in the West, we are taught in school the greatness of Roman Empire, which in reality was little more than imperial fascism (the original Fascists, as symbolized by a bundle of sticks and axe) built on top of the economic prosperity and inventiveness of earlier people living in ancient Greek and Phoenecian city states.

Please do an analysis of the standard of living between the Roman Republic/Empire and the Dark Ages. You'll be shocked. It's not remotely comparable: The Dark Ages were a massive step backward, to the point the saw aqueducts and thought Giants had built them. One could go hundreds of miles unarmed on Roman Roads and not see a single walled town or fortification; Middle Ages travel in the same territories of France, Italy, etc. were chock full of bandits, Raubritter, and everywhere it was remotely feasible, walled against violence.

Saxon kings are buried with ancient Roman Amphorae - mass produced Tarraco Pottery - imported all the way from what is modern Catalonia; Pottery that a slave wouldn't even be whipped for breaking a few centuries earlier because it was as common as dirt.

HonklerCodeStudent says

Please do an analysis of the standard of living between the Roman Republic/Empire and the Dark Ages. You'll be shocked. It's not remotely comparable: The Dark Ages were a massive step backward, to the point the saw aqueducts and thought Giants had built them. One could go hundreds of miles unarmed on Roman Roads and not see a single walled town or fortification; Middle Ages travel in the same territories of France, Italy, etc. were chock full of bandits, Raubritter, and everywhere it was remotely feasible, walled against violence.

Saxon kings are buried with ancient Roman Amphorae - mass produced Tarraco Pottery - imported all the way from what is modern Catalonia; Pottery that a slave wouldn't even be whipped for breaking a few centuries earlier because it was as common as dirt.

Doesn't that stark contrast reveal just how wrong the Marxian historiography about "Progress" (i.e. "Progressivism") is. Phrases such as "It is 21st century" that often used by students from the public school brainwashing to justify their new "progressive" ideas really have no meaning in the historical context. The 23rd century could well be stone age after a thermonuclear war wiping out all existing civilization on this planet. The ancients did it, and did it many times over, without the help of thermonuclear weapons. The flushing toilet was in use in Hrappen Civilization of the Indus Valley circa 2000BC; it wasn't seen again until around 300BC to 300AD in Phoenecia and Rome, before disappearing yet again; humanity would not see the popularization of flushing toilet again until the last century or so (Australians typically built houses with out-houses, i.e. no municipal sewage system or even a plumbed toilet in the main house, till the 1950's).

If people were presented sided-by-side the two choices that you mentioned, obviously nobody would choose the dark ages. It should be quite obvious that the general population was presented with something even worse than the dark ages at the end of the Roman Empire (when scribes stopped being paid so less documents are left behind). Even at the peak of Roman power, at the end of the Republic (before Roman Empire), traveling or even living in France was not safe (thanks to Rome): The Hevetiis (in today's Switzerland) had such a long period of peace and prosperity on their own that they had an over-population problem, so asked for Roman permission to cross a narrow strip of Roman land to relocate to what is today's Southern France (not yet under Roman rule at the time); Caesar didn't reply to the request, waited for the Helvetiis to move then quickly ambushed them killing more than half of their population of hundreds of thousands and sent the rest back to the hills of Switzerland minus their belongings. After the appetite for looting was thus whetted, Caesar advanced his army onto Gaul (in today's France) and Belgica (roughly today's Belgium and northern France), both were not barbarian lands but occupied by highly sophisticated non-Roman societies that had been trading with Rome. Caesar's army proved to be far more effective than the local armies, massacring somewhere between 20-50% of the local population, and looted all their wealth. That is the real story behind Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul. With his troops thus gorged on the loot from Gaul (and from Helvets and Belgica), Caesar turned his legions into his private army holding personal fealty to himself, and was ready to march on Rome to overthrow the Republic. With Caesar and Rome as neighbor, it wasn't just unsafe to travel in France (Gaul) but also unsafe just to be alive and prosperous in Gaul.

The Roman armies obviously did not enforce laws along the roads for free. The Appian Way itself was built as a corruption racket to enrich Censor Appius and as a way to loot Samnites (Rome didn't control the entire penninsula yet at the time, a couple centuries before Caesar). All the Roman armies and law enforcement from then on had to be fed by looting more and more outsiders, which was euphemistically called "expanding the empire." Its doubtful even the Aqueduct could pay for itself. When the empire finally reached its eventual geographical limit by around 200AD, literally exhausting external targets to loot as across the border would find real barbarians instead of civilized societies, what followed was run-away inflation and the Crisis of the Third Century. What had been 90+% silver content Roman Dinar (coin about the size of a dime) at the time of the Republic was debased to have less than 2% silver. Obviously, troops and even police wouldn't enforce laws if you try to pay them with such nonsense; they wouldn't even follow orders without real pay. Foreign mercenaries had to be hired in order to reduce cost (and to fill recruitment quota, the birthrates in Rome was way down by then). Taxes raising and currency debasement continued. . . eventually getting to the point where not even the Roman tax-collectors would accept Roman Dinar coins. Starvation became rampant as trade systems broke down. Government armies (and former mercenary armies hired by government but underpaid) would not only not protect the population but loot the population themselves and sack entire cities! Roman citizens sold themselves to big estates as serfs in order to avoid the taxmen and to stay alive. The hell-on-earth produced by the Roman bureaucracy was far worse than the Dark Ages. Feudalism literally came into being by popular demand.

What Rome had in terms of standards of living in prosperous time, the Ancient Greek city states and Phoenecian city states had them all, minus the egregious ostentacious stuff that couldn't pay for themselves without looting from neighbors and eventually looting from its own population. Hrappen and Phoenecian flushing toilets obviously had some kind of municipal water and sewer system connecting them to make them work; they just didn't build giant Stalinistic white elephants like Rome did.

BTW, it's not as if it were safe to be an emperor in Rome either. The top bureaucrats constantly fought each other and hatched conspiracies to kill each other. There were many Roman Emperors who was on the throne for less than a year before being murdered by his guards and replaced by a new emperor. That's why the last head of imperial guard decided not to take the throne after killing the previous emperor and seizing power in Rome, thereby according to mainstream historians putting an end to the West Roman Empire . . . essentially making himself into a local feudal lord in order to live a little longer.

HonkpilledMaster says

A land, rather than property tax, is the best way to drive best use. It also compels Density when Density is the best use, rather than a cabal of landlords manipulating the system for their benefit by restricting density, since the land value and thus tax would rise higher than the current inefficient use (say, one SFH instead of a triplex).

Landlords actually want multi-family buildings, as they are cheaper to build (per unit) and have lower maintenance cost (per unit) due to less surface area. It's the American general population who prefer single family homes. Outside of NYC, Boston and DC, most people in America prefer SFH over apartment buildings. Women have a magical attachment to white picket fences, and men usually buy homes for their wives.

Reality says

humanity would not see the popularization of flushing toilet again until the last century or so (Australians typically built houses with out-houses, i.e. no municipal sewage system or even a plumbed toilet in the main house, till the 1950's).

When you leave out the BC and Medieval times, I was even surprised it went back this far:

"It is a widely-held belief that Thomas Crapper designed the first flush toilet in the 1860s. It was actually 300 years earlier, during the 16th century, that Europe discovered modern sanitation. The credit for inventing the flush toilet goes to Sir John Harrington, godson of Elizabeth I, who invented a water closet with a raised cistern and a small downpipe through which water ran to flush the waste in 1592. He built one for himself and one for his godmother; sadly, his invention was ignored for almost 200 years: it was was not until 1775 that Alexander Cummings, a watchmaker, developed the S-shaped pipe under the toilet basin to keep out the foul odours."

I was talking about the "popularization of flushing toilet"; i.e. the engineering feat of municipal water and sewer systems. Hrappens, Phoenecians and Rome all had entire city blocks (of apartment buildings) using flushing toilets and indoor plumbing, connected to municipal water feed and sewer discharge networks. That didn't re-appear in West European (mostly British and Dutch top cities) and North American (mostly NYC, Boston and DC) until the late 19th century; for much of the rest of the modern world, they had to wait till mid-20th century. One of the derogatory jokes told during WWII was that soviet soldiers were so enamored by the flushing toilets when they arrived in Austria and Germany that some of them decided to unseat the toilet and carry it with them. I suspect that joke might be apocryphal but shows that flushing toilet was new to most of the world's population and the key to the flushing toilet is the plumbing network.

Reality says

The Roman armies obviously did not enforce laws along the roads for free. The Appian Way itself was built as a corruption racket to enrich Censor Appius and as a way to loot Samnites (Rome didn't control the entire penninsula yet at the time, a couple centuries before Caesar). All the Roman armies and law enforcement from then on had to be fed by looting more and more outsiders, which was euphemistically called "expanding the empire." Its doubtful even the Aqueduct could pay for itself. When the empire finally reached its eventual geographical limit by around 200AD, literally exhausting external targets to loot as across the border would find real barbarians instead of civilized societies, what followed was run-away inflation and the Crisis of the Third Century. What had been 90+% silver content Roman Dinar (coin about the size of a dime) at the time of the Republic was debased to have less than 2% silver. Obviously, troops and even police wouldn't enforce laws if

The Appian Way was built about centuries before the massive debasement of the coinage by the 4th Century AD.

Rome failed because it depended NOT on bureaucratic state salaried officials, but local nobles running amphitheatres, maintaining roads, etc. Once they realized they could vamoose to the countryside and abandon their historic roles, taxation increased (accerating the process), and desperate measures like debasing coinage.

Most entities fail because the Elites become decadent and no longer want to put in the work while enjoying the luxuries. This was recognized even back in the Classical Era by Greeks, quite aside from Rome.

The Byzantine Empire lasted a lot longer than the original Roman Empire it split from, one of the reasons was it had a professional strata of tax collectors and officials beholden to the Emperor and rationalized collection and army/infrastructure maintenance.

Ironically, the East was less dependent on Slaves, whereas the West, which rose to greatness without Slaves, collapsed in part because of the widespread adoption of Slavery.

When a huge portion of the population becomes landless and unemployable due to concentration of wealth and employment of slaves, they no longer have skin in the game to want to defend the system.

Ancaps don't understand the incredible soft power of skin in the game that happens with broad, roughly equal ownership with few extremes, in a polity.

HonkpilledMaster says

The Appian Way was built about centuries before the massive debasement of the coinage by the 4th Century AD.

Like I wrote in my previous post, the Appian Way was built a couple centuries before the time of Caesar. At that time, public work projects and even wars could be funded by war spoils. When imperial expansion stopped as Rome ran out of targets to loot (as frontiers pushed up against real barbarians that had little wealth to be looted) by about 200AD, currency debasement took off rapidly.

Rome failed because it depended NOT on bureaucratic state salaried officials, but local nobles running amphitheatres, maintaining roads, etc. Once they realized they could vamoose to the countryside and abandon their historic roles, taxation increased (accerating the process), and desperate measures like debasing coinage.

Rome used tax-farming, which is a more efficient way of collecting taxes. Having a fixed layer of bureaucrats on salaries would be even more costly within a couple generations: the pension cost and the need to find placements for bureaucrats' children. Every bureaucratic system appears to be efficient in the first few decades due to favorable working bureaucrat to pensioner ratio (nobody is a pensioner yet in the first few years/decades), but over time both the pension liability and the natural desire of every bureaucrat to have more bureaucrat under his control would quickly doom bureaucratic systems.

Most entities fail because the Elites become decadent and no longer want to put in the work while enjoying the luxuries. This was recognized even back in the Classical Era by Greeks, quite aside from Rome.

Elites and their children growing up in wealth.

The Byzantine Empire lasted a lot longer than the original Roman Empire it split from, one of the reasons was it had a professional strata of tax collectors and officials beholden to the Emperor and rationalized collection and army/infrastructure maintenance.

After the Crisis of the Third Century, Roman Emperor Constantine moved capital to Constantinople (Byzantine), so WRE back in Rome was actually the split-off. The East had more resources and more pliant population to rule over. These two factors were likely the most crucial factors in why ERE lasted longer. In technical details, ERE's use of the Solidus, a gold coin that avoided debasement, for payment to soldiers likely preserved the regime. The continued existence of ERE however was hardly a blessing for the people under its rule. Given the conditions in Western Europe by the mid-5th century, dismembering WRE into a cluster of feudal states was a good thing for the local people: so they don't have to fund their warlords' struggle for emperorship in Rome.

Ironically, the East was less dependent on Slaves, whereas the West, wh...

ERE essentially became a weak re-incarnation of the earlier Persian Empire, with layers of bureaucrats under the autocratic rule of an Imperial family dynasty, essentially reducing all citizens to Helots (a class that are treated even worse than slaves, as slaves are cared for by their owners as you would care for your private car, but Helots are like rental cars in use by the Imperial bureaucrats; the 20th century equivalent would be Soviet Gulag and Nazi labor camp inmates.).

Ancaps don't understand the incredible soft power of skin in the game that happens with broad, roughly equal ownership with few extremes, in a polity.

Government intervention in the economy, now and back then, was the primary reason behind wealth polarization. For example, FED's artificially low interest rate is why asset prices are as high as they are, while stripping less wealthy savers of saving returns. Back then (in Roman time), government handout of dole (imported from Egypt, which was owned by the Emperor personally) reduced market price for grain in Rome and bankrupted farmers in Italy; government contracts enriched men like Appius; tax burden fell more heavily on middle-class while less enforced against large estates. etc. etc. It's just not realistic to expect bureaucrats immune to being bought off, at least after the 2nd generation, so the more bureaucrats the more get bought off by the rich to oppress the poor.