[wredcoll]

I agree about the company stores thing, but it's pretty common (right now in america) for someone to work at a factory, that they do not own, and live in a house, that they also do not own.

The distinction between that and some kind of stereotypical medieval serf living on a farm he was granted by a lord and producing crops that he uses to pay his rents and so forth seems somewhat minor.

Yes in general a modern american has more government enforced rights and protections, but at the end of the day a lot of rights aren't really all that relevant if you can't afford them in the first place.

Musk and I both have the right to build a factory to produce electric cars, but one of us is going to have a much harder time exercising that right.

(Not to say that we aren't living in a better world, we absolutely are, I would never trade places with basically anyone from "the past", but the point isn't that things aren't as bad as they used to be, the point is how do we improve what we have today)