Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part V: Life in Cycles

In short, most peasant farmers must sharecrop at least some of their land, and on sharecropped land, extraction rates are on the order of 50% (for basically nothing in return).

The difference of course being, in our wealthy age, the communal benefits nowadays are similarly greater.

I think certain comparisons regarding social spending now are just cultural self-congratulation.

For instance, yes a politician can't just pocket any takings directly. Instead, it has to be indirect - post-office speaking fees, consulting, etc, that can easily render them far richer than any manor lord of old.

Also in such undeveloped, poor, and violent times, the value of law, military power, as well as what communal spending did happen - a granary, a road, a temple - would have similar value parity to them then as to us for what we get in the modern era.

Generally, it was closer to "extract until the rate of malnutrition deaths and desperate uprising makes it not worth trying to extract yet more".

My own interpretation is that it's difficult to precisely compare how peasants were exploited to modern taxation regimes in the developed world. Perhaps more as an unfavorable relationship with the only employer in town?