Are you seriously comparing gig workers to slavery? This is just beyond absurd, and it makes me dubious as to whether you're participating in this conversation in good faith.
On the off chance that you're not trolling, contractors - unlike slaves - have the freedom to choose what work they'll do. Drivers for Uber often also drive for Lyft when it pays better. There's nothing stopping them leaving if their opinion is that the pay is not worth the work. By comparison, slaves are not free and are forced to do whatever work their masters tell them to.
Slaves and serf were historically also free to go if they have paid off their masters. You could also argue thst they had received some protection and benefits.
No, slaves weren't free to go. The whole point of slaves is that they don't need to be paid so saying that they could pay off their masters is moot. There was also no requirement that theirs masters set them free even if a slave could somehow reimburse them for their initial purchase cost. They were their master's personal property, and their master could decide not to sell them if he so wished.
Slaves also had next to no protection. Slaves could be killed in gladiatorial fights, and were often used to work in the most unhealthy and unsafe jobs. Masters could rape their slaves at will, or prostitute their slaves. The only "protection" they had was the fact that it was in their masters' self-interest to keep them alive so that they could continue working.
I seriously cannot fathom as to how you can think that the gig economy is comparable to owning other human beings as property.
> Although in general freed slaves could become citizens, with the right to vote if they were male
> Roman slaves could hold property which, despite the fact that it belonged to their masters, they were allowed to use as if it were their own.
> Claudius announced that if a slave was abandoned by his master, he became free. Nero granted slaves the right to complain against their masters in a court. And under Antoninus Pius, a master who killed a slave without just cause could be tried for homicide.[65] Legal protection of slaves continued to grow as the empire expanded. It became common throughout the mid to late 2nd century AD to allow slaves to complain of cruel or unfair treatment by their owners.
Also some slave had been administering largest empires on Earth (China, Roman Empire) or establishing empires of their own with control over lifes of milions of free people.
> Particularly in Egypt, but also in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India, mamluks held political and military power. In some cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as emirs or beys. Most notably, mamluk factions seized the sultanate centered on Egypt and Syria, and controlled it as the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517).
So back to the subject. Slavery and serfdom had been complex institutions spanning thousands of years and multiple cultures and historical circumstances.
And yes. I am personally convinced that bringing poor people and immigrants with limited citizenship rights into perpetuating economic relation where they cannot make economic progress and mostly accumulate debt and obligations with limited social benefits is modern version of serfdom.
You deceptively omit parts of the paragraphs you quote:
> Roman slaves could hold property which, despite the fact that it belonged to their masters, they were allowed to use as if it were their own.[58] Skilled or educated slaves were allowed to earn their own money, and might hope to save enough to buy their freedom.[59][60] Such slaves were often freed by the terms of their master's will, or for services rendered. A notable example of a high-status slave was Tiro, the secretary of Cicero. Tiro was freed before his master's death, and was successful enough to retire on his own country estate, where he died at the age of 99.[61][62][63] However, the master could arrange that slaves would only have enough money to buy their freedom when they were too old to work. They could then use the money to buy a new young slave while the old slave, unable to work, would be forced to rely on charity to stay alive.
The opportunity to buy one's way to freedom was not the norm, and typically only skilled or educated slaves could aspire to do this. And, as the article mentioned, this could take a very long amount of time and its only something that skilled or educated slaves might aspire to achieve.
> Although in general freed slaves could become citizens, with the right to vote if they were male, those categorized as dediticii suffered permanent disbarment from citizenship. The dediticii were mainly slaves whose masters had felt compelled to punish them for serious misconduct by placing them in chains, branding them, torturing them to confess a crime, imprisoning them or sending them involuntarily to a gladiatorial school (ludus), or condemning them to fight with gladiator or wild beasts (their subsequent status was obviously a concern only to those who survived). Dediticii were regarded as a threat to society, regardless of whether their master's punishments had been justified, and if they came within a hundred miles of Rome, they were subject to reenslavement.
First of all, this only applies if the slave was freed which is up to the discretion of their master. Also, I wrote an essay on Roman slavery and the patterns of slavery evolved over the course of Rome's roughly millennium long existence. Some periods saw reduced or even eliminated paths for slaves to become free let along citizens. Slaves in the Roman Empire varied as far as their conditions. Educated slaves might lead decent lives, but on the whole slaves are on the lowest rungs of society and did not even remotely have the kinds of worker protections we have today.
Middle Eastern soldier-slaves aren't really slaves as Westerners understand the term. They were effectively a military caste. In fact, the article even says this in its opening section, "The most enduring Mamluk realm was the knightly military caste in Egypt in the Middle Ages, which developed from the ranks of slave soldiers."
> And yes. I am personally convinced that bringing poor people and immigrants with limited citizenship rights into perpetuating economic relation where they cannot make economic progress and mostly accumulate debt and obligations with limited social benefits is modern version of serfdom.
These companies don't set immigration policy so I'm not sure what you're trying to say in this paragraph. And besides, many citizens also drive for these companies. And most importantly, if they decide that there are better opportunities than Uber and Lyft they are free to take those opportunities. This isn't serfdom at all, it's objectively wrong to call it that. The defining feature of serfdom and slavery is that the workers do not have agency to decide their form of employment. Uber and Lyft drivers do. If a serf thinks they can make more money as a craftsman instead of as a farmer they are not allowed to change their jobs because they're a serf. If an Uber or Lyft driver decides they can make more money working the checkout counter at Safeway they have the agency to take up that opportunity because they're not slaves or serfs. Calling Uber and Lyft the "modern version of serfdom" either demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of these terms on your part, of it's a bald faced lie.
The point remains, comparing Uber and Lyft drivers to slaves is absolutely inane.
> You deceptively omit parts of the paragraphs you quote
I do not intend to be deceptive. You have provided overly simplistic vision of slavery and I have provided some counterexamples.
> The opportunity to buy one's way to freedom was not the norm, and typically only skilled or educated slaves could aspire to do this. And, as the article mentioned, this could take a very long amount of time and its only something that skilled or educated slaves might aspire to achieve.
This seems to me like a vision of an American dream of sorts. Promise of social mobility for a choosen few members of lower class to become middle class.
The problem is that for the last 30 years American dream isn't working anymore. It is rather that middle class poeple are pushed in lower class ranks.
> I do not intend to be deceptive. You have provided overly simplistic vision of slavery and I have provided some counterexamples.
No you have not. You have selectively quoted parts of a Wikipedia article to portray Roman slavery as though slaves were treated well and had reliable paths to freedom. This is absolutely not the case, slaves had little to no protection and were subject to whim of their masters who could harm them without repercussion.
> This seems to me like a vision of an American dream of sorts. Promise of social mobility for a choosen [sic] few members of lower class to become middle class. The problem is that for the last 30 years American dream isn't working anymore. It is rather that middle class poeple are pushed in lower class ranks.
Sure. But how on Earth do you go from, "social mobility isn't as good as I would like" to "gig workers are comparable to slaves"? You're clearly reluctant to defend this statement, probably because you've realized how inane it really is.
Talking about the historical situation of slaves while referring only to ancient Rome is incredibly contrived considering slavery was alive and well not that long ago.
It’s just a word that we sometimes use to describe certain kinds of superior-inferior relationships: master-servant, lord-peasant, employer-employee, landlord-tenant, etc.
Or how about debtpeon-bank?
Taxman-taxpayer...
Government-citizen...
State-subject...
You say “slavery” and you think of “black slavery”, but do you think of the ruthlessly exploited sharecropper?
How about the fresh-faced grad indentured to his debt for life?
The newlywed with the mortgage on the house that cost him 10x what it cost his father?
On the off chance that you're not trolling, contractors - unlike slaves - have the freedom to choose what work they'll do. Drivers for Uber often also drive for Lyft when it pays better. There's nothing stopping them leaving if their opinion is that the pay is not worth the work. By comparison, slaves are not free and are forced to do whatever work their masters tell them to.