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Comment by Boritanian | Hacker News Reader

A serf cannot 'quit' his lord. An employee can.

Everybody can say 'NO' to the CEO. What you cannot do is agree to exchange your work for his money, and then when he asks you to work, say 'NO'. If you do not wish to work, simply cancel this arrangement.

And the inquisition could BURN YOU ALIVE. HR cannot even physically touch you for fear of the lawsuit.

This comparison is such an insult to the people who had laid the foundation of a modern society, and to those who actually died fighting to defend and maintain such societies, that you should seriously reconsider your position.

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> A serf cannot 'quit' his lord. An employee can.

Perhaps the analogy works better for graduate students. Advisors often control a Ph.D. student's academic progress and financial support, and it's very hard to change advisors without starting over from scratch.

> A serf cannot 'quit' his lord. An employee can.

I'm vastly ignorant on the subject, but that makes me wonder if there were any serfs moving to other regions or countries back then, and if so, how that worked out for them.

> A serf cannot 'quit' his lord. An employee can.

An employee thinks they can, in many countries they can't, as there isn't any other job to do.

Oh, give it a rest. You're not actually outraged, you're just jumping on an opportunity to call him a hypocrite. The guy fumbled an analogy. I don't buy that you're that apoplectic about serfs from the 1500s. You get it, I get it, he gets it. It's fine.

I am not angry or outraged. I didnt call him a hypocrite.

People simply lose sight of the luxury and freedom that we have in modern societies. It takes active reflection and a study of history to really appreciate the things we have.

While an improvement to the economics system or the lives of the common man is possible, you cannot do it if you don't have an honest vision of what the current condition is.

So much work has been done to build the modern society. You wouldn't call linux a waste of time because it has bugs, would you?

Make your comparison against an average working american in a poor town with a family. I bet they look closer to serfs than you would care to admit. Absolute freedom has gone up, but that does not mean we don't have 'modern serfdom' for people who can't leave their job for fear of going bankrupt when their medicine costs 2,000 per month.

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