Celebrim
Legend
They are, tautologically, of analogical use at best.
There are three (at least three) serious problems with analogies.
First, to make a good one, you have to already fully understand both the thing you are speaking of and the thing you are making an analogy to. This is actually harder than simply speaking of the thing itself, but in practice people often will imagine that making an analogy is easier than discussing the subject. They do this usually because they don't realize they don't concretely understand the thing they are speaking of.
Second, in order to understand an analogy, the speaker has to fully understand the thing the analogy references and also what particular attribute you are mapping from the object of the analogy back to the subject. But you often have no way of knowing whether the person you are speaking to has this understanding, and communicating what feature you are mapping requires a high amount of clarity. Often, it's just better to speak with clarity on the thing itself, as an analogy is usually more likely to muddle understanding than clarify it. A favorite example of mine is in the bible there is a passage where the disciples go to Christ and say, "Why are you always speaking in parables?", and he says, "Because I don't want anyone to understand me."
But by far the biggest problem with analogies is that they are almost always misused as a proof statement rather than a means of clarification (or obfuscation). Pretty much anytime an analogy is used as proof, it's wrong and you are an idiot. The method of argument goes like this. "A and B have a similar feature. Therefore B is like this in another feature because A is like that in another feature." And that's just wrong. That's only going to be true if A and B have a one for one and onto relationship with each other in every feature, and generally speaking that's just never true. When it is true, A and B are indistinguishable, and if A and B are distinguishable then the argument by analogy may be false. Almost invariably, if you see this sort of argument by analogy offered, you are dealing with someone that is too stupid to bother debating with, because they will be too stupid to ever see why they are wrong in the first place.
Hence, my delight in seeing an analogy used correctly and well for a change.
This possibly true, but before you go extending your analogy too much, there are definitely features that led to the development of one that aren't found in the other. Beyond the problem of titles not being consistent across organizations or with the actual level of authority, I'm not sure the analogy works. However one other area that both have in common is that generally, if you want to win the allegiance of a venture capitalist, you have to give him a stake in the ownership and that's precisely the method by which disparate interests are organizing in a feudal society. They idea in feudalism in theory or in the mythic chivalric texts seemed was to build this sense that all the parts were in it together as an extended kindred, and certainly intermarriage was a big part of feudalism. A feudal warlord in a society that has experienced massive social and political upheaval, understands that his underlings are loyal to him only to the extent that it enhances their own survival. But in practice what often happened in feudalism is that the individual franchises went their own way and ignored as best as they could the influence of the nominal head of the corporation. But again, here I'm taking the analogy too far. It's only meaningful if you already understand both sides of it.
And very important issues in the rise of feudalism like the shortage of currency, the difficulty in long distance communication, and the break down in the rule of law and a willingness to enforce your will by military force generally aren't features of a modern free market landscape.
