[serf]

>History is replete with advancements and inventions which were supposed to usher in utopia, and all they have ever done is further the means by which the powerful enslave and control us. Technology cannot solve human nature.

humans are more sovereign than ever before in most calculable metrics.

[krapp]

What "calculable metrics?" By what definition of "sovereign?" Objectively, this is a meaningless statement to me.

[WalterBright]

Which countries force you where to live and what job to work at?

[krapp]

I would assume at least North Korea does. But every modern state requires you to at least work and to have housing, in order to generate taxable revenue and afford the means of survival.

But unless you hunt and grow your own food, own your own land and aren't subject to laws or government that owns your identity and tells you where you can go and what you can do, you aren't sovereign. If you have to spend the majority of your useful life trading your labor to a corporation, you aren't sovereign even if the market gives you the option of which feudal lord to serve as vassal to. If you require modern technological society, the infrastructure of agriculture and healthcare, for your survival, you aren't sovereign. There is a reason that word is synonymous with "ruler" or "king," it's a status that very few people, particularly in modern society, can claim.

[WalterBright]

I am sure you know the difference between free labor and slave labor.

[krapp]

I'm sure you know that's beside the point. Free labor isn't that free when the only alternative to trading the most useful half of your life to corporations is starvation in the streets. And the only alternative to that is dependence on a state's social safety net. Neither may be outright chattel slavery or literal feudalism but in modern society where people truly own so little, even of themselves, it isn't freedom either.

[WalterBright]

Oh, it's exactly the point. You've conflated freedom with being free from want. Freedom means being free of other people forcing you to do things. You can go about satisfying your wants any way you want to, as long as you don't force others.

That's what free labor is.

If you believe you're entitled to the fruits of the labor of others, then you've enslaved them, and that's not the moral high ground.