Feudalism: a system of governance by reciprocal legal obligations. – Absolute state of #SilverRule. People assumed FREE to sort things out by themselves w/ contractual agreements. – No central coercive power (the powerful naturally dictate the contractual terms)

2/ Neo-feudalism doesn’t mean we”ll dress up with a cloak, tunic & leggings like in Middle Ages. It means concepts like “active citizen” (CENTRAL institutions) & “rule of law” (UNIVERSALISM) are replaced w/ feudal serfdom of private contracts. Example:

3/ One would expect that Taylor Swift would have the upper hand in her own negotiations. In the feudal economic network (bilateral contracts) every seigneur is still a “vassal” under another seigneur. T. Swift is not “sovereign” but partial “suzerain” on her own work.

4/ The constitutional establishment of EU embraces its feudal past. Design for the future: more decentralisation of National powers + more private (contractual) law. In EU directives the word “citizen” is being replaced by “client”. e.g. The Client in the Public Sector.

5/ The lex mercatoria (from the Latin for “merchant law”) was prevalent during the medieval feudal period. The EU celebrates lex mercatoria as the “triumph of private autonomy” (#SilverRule).

More: Private law and state-making in the age of globalisation

Question asked to Benoux: But reciprocal obligations doesn’t mean they are symmetric. If they are not, don’t they break the Silver Rule?

In bilateral agreements (with no God/Universalism in the equation like in Golden Rule) symmetry is a tricky game. T. Swift is asymmetrically disadvantaged? After all “they” created her & she plays a twitter game. From zero to hero, she may owe everything to a handful of people.

In other words, the notion of justice can’t be served when it doesn’t exist in the first place. #SilverRule is chaos of different “justices” (symmetries). And if a universal notion of justice exists, then is translated in central coercive force (Christian nations, #GoldenRule).

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