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@vidar @TruthSandwich @futurebird What do you mean, better than everything else that had been tried? There were systems of free labor in medieval Europe contemporary with serfdom. There were so many peasants fleeing to cities with free labor that there were rules for how long lords had to fetch the peasants back (a year and a day). There were peripheral regions that never quite adopted manorialism and it was fine; Russia only went manorial as the Early Modern tsardom was reestablishing serfdom.