People will happily say that those people (like the illegals working as temps and cannot complain or get deported) are free.
And that slavery is always evil.
Yet, when you try to look at situations without using your pre-judgement of words, it become something else entirely.
For example, in Brazil, the laws for commerce workers was that the commerce owners needed to house the workers on their own home, give them food, take good care of them, and abusing them was illegal.
Also, it was common for commerce workers get tips, and the law allowed them to keep those (and the commerce owners frequently gave them more too).
Some cities reached a point, where most of the city business were ran by ex-workers, that earned enough to start their own.
This all, were slavery.
When slavery was abolished, all that people were dumped into the streets, and the money they already got from their employers now became wage, slighly higher, but not enough to cover the stuff they lost.
Who is truly, a slave? The one that works in crap conditions because if he don't he will get deported, or the one that although he could not quit (unless he was abused, the law allowed it in those cases) he had anything he might need because the law said so?
It is easy to label a word as evil, or good, but words are used to label and describe things, you should not use words to label other words.
I would describe the situations that those people face as evil, having almost no money, and forced to work, because although they can quit, the only result from that will be starvation.
I also think that student debt is evil, I am one, of countless people, that struggles to make ends meet without even having a family, people that when the debt is paid, will be far behind non-indebted peers, I think it is funny that during the high-point of my career in money terms, I earned more than some family chefs that I know, and ended with LESS money, purely because good part of my money was in studies expenses (paying student debt and other university related costs).
Free, is a friend of mine, that refused to go to university, searched for a low paying but permanent job as manual worker at night, and slowly built his career, debt free, while he still has a blue collar job, he has a motorbike, surplus money, enough money to start a family, and his job is stable. It pains other people that went with school with him, that they got into college, and are now forced to work in "well paying" jobs but with no chance of career improvement or stability to pay their debts, while the "dumb" guy that decided to ignore college and take his time to choose his first job, is the one well off.
Slavery == evil? I don't think so... it is a word, that describe many things, some of those evil, some not. College == success? I don't think so... it is a word, that describe a institution, the context, the process, and many other things, define what happens to you.
Now why I am writing all that? I have no idea. I just felt like writing this after reading the article.
EDIT: I hate how HN wrecks formatting.