The Atlantic has a very good piece by Cullen Murphy up titled “Feudalism Is Our Future” (archive link).
The title overstates things a bit.
It’s not that they’re saying that the future as described is inevitable.
The article is arguing that, in the past, similar behavior by the distributed ruling class in various empires has led to the localized and personalized situation we call “feudalism”.
And that that seems to be the goal of a rather large political movement.
Which is frankly more concerning than the idea that they could do this on accident.
But more important, really, than the specific analysis is the underlying concept that by knowing about the past we are better informed about the present and can be better prepared for the future.
This is a critically important idea, and one that I see too rarely these days.
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