How Merchants Became The New Nobility
Once our rulers were transparently violent. Lords and warlords. They paraded armored elephants through the streets, with whips and fire all around. Now the people that rule us are silently violent. They use laws and by-laws. They parade their wealth through Wall Street, with bells and tickers all around.
As Leo Tolstoy said, “One form of slavery is not abolished until another has already replaced it.” He wrote this in 1900, as the transition from feudalism to capitalism was becoming obvious. As The Who said, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Wherever you are in history, it’s the same shit, different day.
At the beginning of the colonial era, rapacious merchants got licenses and warrants from kings and queens. Then the kings and queens fell, and the merchants remained, the Earth theirs to spoil. That merchant class now runs everything and they’re openly admired the way that nobility was. In our fairy tales today, nobody’s marrying a prince. They’re marrying a billionaire.
It’s easy to forget that merchants were once looked down on. They were itinerants, irritants, a necessary evil but certainly not noble. Now they’re worshiped as better than all of us, endless articles are written on how many books they read, and what they eat for breakfast. This is a new thing…
