5 ms·

Comparing highly paid office work with slavery is incredibly insulting.

Hnrobert42 5y ago
You could either be genuinely insulted or just trawling the internet policing it for misused words. It’s hard to tell which is the case.
- easytiger 5y ago
  And you could be trolling the internet trying to police any opposition to concepts, however ridiculous, that you find favourable to your philosophy. The word cannot either have been misused as people have subsequently expended great energy defending its use.
NKosmatos 5y ago
Slavery is a strong word but in reality this is what we office workers are, modern day slaves and that’s how I understood it, as an analogy. They pay us for our work&time and they “own” us for these 40-50hrs/week. Remote working is not the silver bullet and for sure it’s not suitable for all, but for some of us it’s a life changing opportunity. Remote working opened a new door and gave us new possibilities, allowing us a little bit more freedom on many aspects of our jobs, thus making the whole thing more tolerable. After all that’s the expected flow of our modern lives for most of us: study, work, die.
- blub 5y ago
  More like modern day blowhards. Here's what modern day slavery looks like: "Harassed, insulted and raped – that is everyday for thousands of women working in tomato and strawberry fields of Spain, Italy and Morocco. The vegetables and fruits they harvest are sold in German supermarkets and all over Europe".
- mise_en_place 5y ago
  Slavery is perhaps not the right word, but prisoner could be. That’s why they are called “golden” handcuffs. Very few people escape this prison, but it is indeed possible and doesn’t require going out into the woods and becoming a hermit. To continue the analogy, isn’t the jailer/warden also a prisoner? He too is stuck in the prison, perhaps for different reasons but stuck nonetheless.
  - johnnyanmac 5y ago
    More like a walled garden. You have duties to uphold, but you have plenty of freedom to leave. but you know the outside world will be difficult until you find the next oasis to give your duties to.
  - kmonsen 5y ago
    Just like you are not a slave the warden is not a prisoner since he can go home every day, and can choose to stop working there if he doesn’t like the place. Choice is what prisoners and slaves don’t have, and we have plenty of both.
  - Scea91 5y ago
    No, still not the right word. Both those words have a meaninh vastly different from voluntary employment. This reminds me of unvaxxed people pinning yellow stars to liken the situation that they cant visit cinema to holocaust
- nindalf 5y ago
  Please just stop. You’re exchanging your services for money. You’re not compelled to offer your services to any particular employer. You think that saying “I’m a modern day slave” will garner you sympathy. In reality it makes you look like a muppet. There’s actual slavery and human trafficking still happening today by the way. These people aren’t helped in any way by you clawing for sympathy.
  - Valakas_ 5y ago
    What a narrow minded way of looking at things. Just because a word doesn't fit 100%, doesn't mean we shouldn't use it if the main idea is there. "You’re not compelled to offer your services to any particular employer." But you are compelled to offer your services to an employer, whose ways of working are almost all similar to each other. And it's not like you have infinite choice. Is it really a choice to move alone somewhere else just to find a decent employer, but sacrifice friends, family, and so on? Is it really a choice not to work and become homeless, a social outcast? Is it really a choice to be an entrepreneur, in such a competitive environment that most startups fail, and you need considerable savings to sustain yourself in case of bad times? Is it really a choice to find such a unicorn of employer that fits a modern day humans needs for privacy, sense of autonomy, sense of progression, good work-life-balance, good compensation, good responsible manager who doesn't micromanage (...), when most employers (have to) follow the same corporativistic mindset to get as most profits as possible out of employees in order to survive in an extremely competitive enviornment? Is there really a choice when you have children to take care of, a mortgage and are just too tired or barely have any time whatsoever to look for jobs or invest time into your own startup? Should I continue? Where is the choice? Where is it? People are not bound by physical means with the threat of death. Sure. But if you can't see other more subtle and equally powerful binds, then you're blind. So yes, this is the modern equivalent slavery, in short - modern slavery - and please you stop.
    - kmonsen 5y ago
      You are not compelled at all. You can probably afford some land in the middle of nowhere and grow your own food. You want some things that are available for money and need a way of getting money. That is very far from slavery. Every day you can choose to with or not, and what you want to work on.
- hcazz 5y ago
  I'd highly recommend you go read the definition of "slave", as well as the history of slavery around the world. Focusing on the context of this article specifically, what makes you think that workers of a company worth 1.78 trillion dollars are slaves?
  - feanaro 5y ago
    The fact that they don't share those 1.78 trillion not even approximately equally.
_0w8t 5y ago
Slavery is a strong word. But consider serfdom in Middle Ages. When some historian looked at it they found that on average a serf of a French baron say 700 years ago worked less than 40 hours per week on average. Perhaps even less than 30. And there was no commute. David Graeber in his «Dawn of everything» discussed that.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  “Some historian” is a bad citation. I’m very good friends with a medievalist professor. Something they said to me recently was interesting. Today, most medievalists don’t really like the term “feudalism” and instead see serfdom as an extension of Roman slave systems. Not chattel slavery, but definitely not a mutually agreed upon and beneficial economic relationship. I’m not so sure that “serfs didn’t actually work all that much” is aligned with current consensus.
- ddalex 5y ago
  But under serfdom peasants were not allowed to move. Workers are free to move to better opportunities as they see fit - that's a big difference.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> David Graeber in his «Dawn of everything» discussed that David Graeber is the one who wrote this: "Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages" And I'm guessing his knowledge of what happened 700 years ago is going to be much less accurate than his knowledge of times he lived through.

You could either be genuinely insulted or just trawling the internet policing it for misused words. It’s hard to tell which is the case.

easytiger 5y ago
And you could be trolling the internet trying to police any opposition to concepts, however ridiculous, that you find favourable to your philosophy. The word cannot either have been misused as people have subsequently expended great energy defending its use.

NKosmatos 5y ago

Slavery is a strong word but in reality this is what we office workers are, modern day slaves and that’s how I understood it, as an analogy. They pay us for our work&time and they “own” us for these 40-50hrs/week. Remote working is not the silver bullet and for sure it’s not suitable for all, but for some of us it’s a life changing opportunity. Remote working opened a new door and gave us new possibilities, allowing us a little bit more freedom on many aspects of our jobs, thus making the whole thing more tolerable. After all that’s the expected flow of our modern lives for most of us: study, work, die.

blub 5y ago
More like modern day blowhards. Here's what modern day slavery looks like: "Harassed, insulted and raped – that is everyday for thousands of women working in tomato and strawberry fields of Spain, Italy and Morocco. The vegetables and fruits they harvest are sold in German supermarkets and all over Europe".
mise_en_place 5y ago
Slavery is perhaps not the right word, but prisoner could be. That’s why they are called “golden” handcuffs. Very few people escape this prison, but it is indeed possible and doesn’t require going out into the woods and becoming a hermit. To continue the analogy, isn’t the jailer/warden also a prisoner? He too is stuck in the prison, perhaps for different reasons but stuck nonetheless.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  More like a walled garden. You have duties to uphold, but you have plenty of freedom to leave. but you know the outside world will be difficult until you find the next oasis to give your duties to.
- kmonsen 5y ago
  Just like you are not a slave the warden is not a prisoner since he can go home every day, and can choose to stop working there if he doesn’t like the place. Choice is what prisoners and slaves don’t have, and we have plenty of both.
- Scea91 5y ago
  No, still not the right word. Both those words have a meaninh vastly different from voluntary employment. This reminds me of unvaxxed people pinning yellow stars to liken the situation that they cant visit cinema to holocaust
nindalf 5y ago
Please just stop. You’re exchanging your services for money. You’re not compelled to offer your services to any particular employer. You think that saying “I’m a modern day slave” will garner you sympathy. In reality it makes you look like a muppet. There’s actual slavery and human trafficking still happening today by the way. These people aren’t helped in any way by you clawing for sympathy.
- Valakas_ 5y ago
  What a narrow minded way of looking at things. Just because a word doesn't fit 100%, doesn't mean we shouldn't use it if the main idea is there. "You’re not compelled to offer your services to any particular employer." But you are compelled to offer your services to an employer, whose ways of working are almost all similar to each other. And it's not like you have infinite choice. Is it really a choice to move alone somewhere else just to find a decent employer, but sacrifice friends, family, and so on? Is it really a choice not to work and become homeless, a social outcast? Is it really a choice to be an entrepreneur, in such a competitive environment that most startups fail, and you need considerable savings to sustain yourself in case of bad times? Is it really a choice to find such a unicorn of employer that fits a modern day humans needs for privacy, sense of autonomy, sense of progression, good work-life-balance, good compensation, good responsible manager who doesn't micromanage (...), when most employers (have to) follow the same corporativistic mindset to get as most profits as possible out of employees in order to survive in an extremely competitive enviornment? Is there really a choice when you have children to take care of, a mortgage and are just too tired or barely have any time whatsoever to look for jobs or invest time into your own startup? Should I continue? Where is the choice? Where is it? People are not bound by physical means with the threat of death. Sure. But if you can't see other more subtle and equally powerful binds, then you're blind. So yes, this is the modern equivalent slavery, in short - modern slavery - and please you stop.
  - kmonsen 5y ago
    You are not compelled at all. You can probably afford some land in the middle of nowhere and grow your own food. You want some things that are available for money and need a way of getting money. That is very far from slavery. Every day you can choose to with or not, and what you want to work on.
hcazz 5y ago
I'd highly recommend you go read the definition of "slave", as well as the history of slavery around the world. Focusing on the context of this article specifically, what makes you think that workers of a company worth 1.78 trillion dollars are slaves?
- feanaro 5y ago
  The fact that they don't share those 1.78 trillion not even approximately equally.

_0w8t 5y ago

Slavery is a strong word. But consider serfdom in Middle Ages. When some historian looked at it they found that on average a serf of a French baron say 700 years ago worked less than 40 hours per week on average. Perhaps even less than 30. And there was no commute. David Graeber in his «Dawn of everything» discussed that.

UncleMeat 5y ago
“Some historian” is a bad citation. I’m very good friends with a medievalist professor. Something they said to me recently was interesting. Today, most medievalists don’t really like the term “feudalism” and instead see serfdom as an extension of Roman slave systems. Not chattel slavery, but definitely not a mutually agreed upon and beneficial economic relationship. I’m not so sure that “serfs didn’t actually work all that much” is aligned with current consensus.
ddalex 5y ago
But under serfdom peasants were not allowed to move. Workers are free to move to better opportunities as they see fit - that's a big difference.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> David Graeber in his «Dawn of everything» discussed that David Graeber is the one who wrote this: "Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages" And I'm guessing his knowledge of what happened 700 years ago is going to be much less accurate than his knowledge of times he lived through.