You may not like the analogy, and the difference in scale is surely a big one, but the principle is the same. In slavery, you were prevented to quit by physical coercion. In capitalism, you are prevented to quit because if you do you and your family will starve (or at least live in poverty, on modern welfare states). The employer can pay you minimum wage for your labour, even if it generates 10x more value, because you have no choice: he has you on the palm of your hand. Submit to the conditions the capital holders dictate, or starve.
1) You are totally discounting the social safety net.
2) If the services you provide are commoditized, there are millions of other people who can do the work you do so you are more easily replaceable. Investing in your skills can remedy that. About the worst thing you could do would be to lament how you are beholden to the capital holders while stagnating with an undifferentiated skillset.
3) "The principle is the same" is an incredibly narrow view to take. It minimizes the horrors of slavery. Working for a living in an at will arrangement is nothing like being the property of another human. You can quit, and go find a new job. You can move to another state - there are no laws that say your previous employer can send bounty hunters after you to reclaim you as a runaway.
1) I didn't, that's what I was referring too when I said "or at least live in poverty, in a modern welfare state"
2) That's all very nice in principle, but in practice that's often not feasible. I'm not talking about the software industry, where everything is very open and full of opportunity, but about low-income jobs and how the people working in them often have such incredibly complex constraints about them that that talk about "investing in your skills" and "differentiating your skillset" is totally disconnected from the reality of life.
3) I guess so. Still I was trying to emphasise the whole binding aspect of it, the fact that in many situations you are only free to leave in principle, because being out of a job can throw you and your family into debt, homelessness, or worse. Wasn't exactly thinking of slavery in the literal, bounty-hunters-after-runaways, sense.
