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Comment by cucumber3732842 | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't make it not forced though.

Most of this sub thread people who are unwilling to say "yeah it's forced labor and that's fine considering the details" doing mental gymnastics to make it not forced.

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Just because something is forced, doesn’t make it slavery. I’m forced to pay taxes; that doesn’t make me a slave. Nor was a tenant farmer in the Middle Ages when required to provide corvée. I think the primary objection in this thread is to the use of the word slavery, which is simply not the same thing.

I agree with your account, the problem is how many perceive slavery. Here in the south (USA) many still think the slaves before the Civil War were "happy". They obviously weren't slaves. Until ALL mankind looks slavery fully in the eye for understanding, we will continue to undervalue those other then ourselves.

I don’t think there can be a bright line between acceptable and unacceptable coercion of liberties.

> Nor was a tenant farmer in the Middle Ages when required to provide corvée.

Many historians now concede that there is little to no meaningful difference between various forms of feudal servitude and slavery.

Slaves in the later Roman Empire also had certain rights, including the right to buy their own freedom in many cases. That doesn’t mean they weren’t slaves.

I will have to disagree with these historians. There is a fundamental difference between having legal personhood and being chattel. To be bound is not the same thing as to be owned.

Many, if not most, historical institutions that are universally recognized as slavery didn’t permit slave owners to dispose of their slaves like arbitrary property they owned. If that’s the definition of slavery, it’s an unusually restrictive one.

> Slaves in the later Roman Empire also had certain rights

Cattle in the USA probably have more legal protections than slaves in the Roman Empire.

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