"Built isolated country estates that couldn’t be sold, divided, or used productively.
Maintained expensive social obligations through parties, hunts, charity, and local governance.
Avoided socializing or marrying within the merchant or professional classes."
Feels like at least some of this can be explained by the notion that country seats are beautiful, parties are fun and the people want status amongst their ingroup
But that's kind of the point, no? Aristocracy was a club. You did your job, insofar as you did, not because of the fear of punishment by your superior (which was existent but only for very extreme and blatant cases), but because you wanted to keep your status. Hence so much effort put in playing status games, because falling out was the worst thing that could conceivably happen to you this side of being thrown into a dungeon and sent to the gallows. That's how honor-based societies work.
Note also that a lot of "do your job" here was actually "fight in wars on horseback", especially in the actual Middle Ages. Modern aristocrats, like the guy hanging around at Versailles during Louis XIV's era, when centralization of administration and reorganization of armies meant they were not needed in their traditional feudal roles any more, were indeed little more than parasites. And at no point did the whole "take care of your peasants" part of the job matter all that much. If you were a crazed ax murderer you would lose status, sure (see: Gilles de Rais), but you could get away with a lot of mistreatment if after all your parties were cool, your hunts fun, your deeds brave, and your gifts to the King generous.
Doesn't this not really solve the problem? If you can't tell if someone is doing their job well, what does it matter how much you can punish them for not doing it? And it seems like if you could detect dishonesty, legal punishments like losing all of your money in lawsuits or being executed would be just as good as losing your country estate.
It's a matter of degree. Usually the problem is one of imperfect rather than zero monitoring, whether because you catch people occassionally or because you have some (less than 100%) level of confidence that you've caught them.
Money, unlike estates, can be taken out of the country if you defect from the public trust. A wealthy merchant could hop town and go to Spain with his wealth and business acumen intact. Execution was indeed practiced Admiral Byng-style in some cases, but isn't a precise enough instrument for cases his "he's probably shirking; let's take him down a notch and promote others."
"Built isolated country estates that couldn’t be sold, divided, or used productively.
Maintained expensive social obligations through parties, hunts, charity, and local governance.
Avoided socializing or marrying within the merchant or professional classes."
Feels like at least some of this can be explained by the notion that country seats are beautiful, parties are fun and the people want status amongst their ingroup
As the meme says: why not both?
And to the extent it is both, the capture theory becomes less important to explain what we see, right?
But that's kind of the point, no? Aristocracy was a club. You did your job, insofar as you did, not because of the fear of punishment by your superior (which was existent but only for very extreme and blatant cases), but because you wanted to keep your status. Hence so much effort put in playing status games, because falling out was the worst thing that could conceivably happen to you this side of being thrown into a dungeon and sent to the gallows. That's how honor-based societies work.
Note also that a lot of "do your job" here was actually "fight in wars on horseback", especially in the actual Middle Ages. Modern aristocrats, like the guy hanging around at Versailles during Louis XIV's era, when centralization of administration and reorganization of armies meant they were not needed in their traditional feudal roles any more, were indeed little more than parasites. And at no point did the whole "take care of your peasants" part of the job matter all that much. If you were a crazed ax murderer you would lose status, sure (see: Gilles de Rais), but you could get away with a lot of mistreatment if after all your parties were cool, your hunts fun, your deeds brave, and your gifts to the King generous.
Doesn't this not really solve the problem? If you can't tell if someone is doing their job well, what does it matter how much you can punish them for not doing it? And it seems like if you could detect dishonesty, legal punishments like losing all of your money in lawsuits or being executed would be just as good as losing your country estate.
It's a matter of degree. Usually the problem is one of imperfect rather than zero monitoring, whether because you catch people occassionally or because you have some (less than 100%) level of confidence that you've caught them.
Money, unlike estates, can be taken out of the country if you defect from the public trust. A wealthy merchant could hop town and go to Spain with his wealth and business acumen intact. Execution was indeed practiced Admiral Byng-style in some cases, but isn't a precise enough instrument for cases his "he's probably shirking; let's take him down a notch and promote others."