The idea that the lives of peasants incorporated into the land by feudal law were all miserable is not established - it is a theory. Measuring 'misery' from a different world is guesswork. We can guess that some may well have been miserable - but for many, their existence, compared to the horrors of early industrialisation as populations were sucked into soulless factories in increasing numbers, may well have been looked back on as a primal eden in comparison. Who might benefit from history recording the lives of medieval peasantry as 'miserable'? The robber barons who enclosed and stole their land, and drove them into their factories as effectively slave-labour perhaps? My feeling is that this whole piece you've written is inspired by an oligarchy-sanctioned and sanitised history that suits the modern robber barons very well.

Oh - and Adam Smith was Scottish, not English - and I promise you he would have been bloody furious with you suggesting otherwise (educated guess!).

So, if I'm reading you correctly, you suggest the answer to wealth inequality now is not to redistribute (implying some correspondence between Robin Hood thievery and modern taxation on the wealthy), but to improve everyone's ability to produce wealth - through education, etc. Sorry, this really does not parse: Robin Hood, myth or not, was not 'stealing' from the rich. He was repatriating the wealth that was stolen in the first place, back to those who really actually did the work. That is the point and power of the story - we all know he is a good guy, and thieves are not good guys. The issue here is whether the modern rich, and particularly - the uber-wealthy - have legitimate claim to their vast wealth, or whether, actually, they are cheats, thieves, criminals - controlling and playing a rigged system, and fundamentally parasiting off everyone else. All available evidence points to the latter - a rigged, criminal system, lorded over by some of the most ruthless and despicable human beings in recorded history.

Now, I am perfectly happy to improve education and training for everyone - god knows it is needed. But current education and training are also part of this rigged system - a system that produces people, like you here, who will not even address the fact that it is fundamentally rigged, by criminals. Yup - don't look over there, keep looking here. This system is just the way it is - improve yourself and your children at our mandated schools, you'll do great... I enjoyed reading this, thanks for putting it out here - but boy, as you can tell, I think it needs a rather less question-begging wide-eyed philosophy behind it. I hope you have a good day too. Db