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Comment by aok1425 | Hacker News Reader

How are they slaves? They have the free will to decide if they want to work or not.

Yeah? Depends how you define free will.

If people want to eat and make rent, they need to afford it somehow, and the employment options are bleak (see: charging scooters).

So maybe you meant they have "the free will to decide if they want to work shitty jobs, or not live". We can't be too surprised that the suicide rate is going up in this country.

That’s a weird definition of a slave and free will. By this definition none of us have free will since most things we do are driven by some motivation. I want to eat and make rent, so I work for the money to do so. Now I’m a slave?

If you hate your job, which has negative affects on your health, are you really free just because you get to choose what clothes you wear or what you have for lunch?

Yes because I can choose to find another job. No one chained me to my desk.

I think it may have to do with the number of options a person has to earn money. To those with few options a shitty job can feel a lot like slavery.

Taking someone to task over the technically incorrect use of the word slavery seems a bit pedantic at best.

Income inequality, underemployment and lack of employment opportunities are real problems. But words have meaning, and we as a species have had a pretty ugly history with slavery. Let’s not dilute the meaning of that word when there are others that are more accurate.

Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and this slavery of wages must go down with the other.

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