Let's take the feudal system the diary writer, i believe, misrepresents. In feudal system, i believe, the monarch owned all land. He then gave this land to rule to different "government" institutions: The church, military, university (perhaps monarch ruled directly some land) etc. These institutions collected rent (taxes) from peasants and this way the peasants supported these institutions. The development that lead to renaissance (science, art, military) etc. happened in these institutions. Rents provided the "taxes" and the peasants could keep more of their labour. Perhaps even then peasants had savings and this because there was no other "taxer", the landowner.
It was not my purpose to talk specifically about the feudal system. Rather, I loosely divided governments into two types, and labeled one of it as "feudal".
Your remark shows that my distinction is quite valid. In the feudal system, there is not much difference between taxes and rent. I extended this coincidence to the case when taxes and rent (and debt) are formally different, but weight on economic productivity in the same way.
If I mortgage, the bank owns my house until the tithe has been paid in full. If I rent, the landlord owns the house and the tithe is a straight tribute.
My employer owns such time as I'm able to persuade him (usually it's a him) will increase his relative social standing through surplus value.
The obligations are entirely assymetric. I'm obliged - forced, in fact - to tithe a substantial part of my social productivity to people and organisations in the ownership class.
There's some mobility so it's possible for canny players to become owners themselves. But for most people freedom of action and interest is very tightly proscribed.
The only difference between feudalism and capitalism is that capitalism adds a second tier of tithing through consumerism. I'm allowed to create some surplus value of my own, in the form of disposable income, but I'm then encouraged to dispose of it in very tightly proscribed ways.
This looks like freedom, but in fact it's a closed market. It's difficult - sometimes unimaginably difficult - for most people to spend disposable income in ways which don't feed straight back to profit for the owners.
This wouldn't be a huge problem if mobility was fluid, so everyone could become an owner and trade equally with other owners.
But in practice the largest owners - specifically the banks and the largest corporations - act as oligarchies and monopolies which makes equal trading impossible.
