Stopped reading there. Read the Dominion rules.
It's a shame, the best part of the post was after that. I mean, you already knew that, but whatever.
Turn and shuffle are anything but equivalent and in a large deck you only shuffle after several turns.
I believe I already addressed this situation in the third case above, but it should not be often if Peasant is present.
In any case, I am done here until I get real experience that playing Hireling with a Disciple is a good idea, and once I get that, I am perfectly willing to accept that I am wrong, but until then, I am in the majority and so have good reason to believe that I am correct. So here is to you: design a kingdom (no Empires or 2nd edition) containing Peasant and Hireling and we'll play it a few times and see if Discipling Hireling works out for you. Since according to you this is much of the time, the task should not be difficult since I am only asking for one instance.