Historically speaking, in a lot of societies a slave had little to no rights. You were another person’s property, in the worst case you had as much rights as a table, and everyone saw that as completely normal.
I’ll talk a bit about the Romans. The position of a slave varied a whole lot between different cultures, eras, and states, but I picked Rome because that’s where I’m best versed in.
So. If you were one of the lucky few, you could have a fairly good position, like a teacher or a secretary, if you were an educated man. In the worst case you could be mining in unspeakably horrid working conditions, and die very early from disease/malnutrition/injury/abuse or whatever.
Still, no matter what work you did, you were completely vulnerable to your master’s whims. He could kill you with no consequences. (IIRC later someone, maybe Claudius, made it illegal to kill a slave for no good reason. One can only ask what they considered a good reason.) You could get whipped. In addition to not getting to choose where you worked, you couldn’t choose where you lived either. You couldn’t get married. You couldn’t own property because you were property yourself.
So, even if you now got forced to work X job, you’d still have so many rights. Your boss can’t chain you to your table or whatever and beat the living shit out of you if they feel like it. (yet)
Pudutr0n@feddit.cl 4 days ago
What about the freedom to not have a residence and not being locked up for the audacity of not living in a fixed location?
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Not owning a house is slavery? What country today or ever in history had guaranteed home ownership?
Ideally, land should not be owned. Land is kept from pure ownership in progressive states through property taxes. You are in effect only renting the land from the state but keep the right to not be removed and the right to sell it.
Pudutr0n@feddit.cl 3 days ago
I was actually referring to the freedom to be a vagabond, hermit, or whatever style of nomadic life you prefer.
What I’m implying is not having a registered legal residence does not allow you to claim some of your rights as a citizen in many countries. You can’t get a driver’s license, passport, etc in the USA. Here in Chile I’m pretty sure you can’t even pay taxes.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’m not sure how that relates to slavery. Freedom to be a vagabond still requires income from work.