Sure, the slavery is "distributed" across multiple actors such as landlords & profit off the whole concept of property as an asset, but ultimately the net result is the same - you have to work just to be afforded shelter.
The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days?
You're also setting up a catch 22 where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist, are a prerequisite to not having slavery, but if no one has to do labor to construct housing then where does it come from?
> where things like housing construction, which require labor to exist
That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top.
Irrelevant. The point is that you could set the minimum wage to zero and people would still make wages higher than that because employers have to compete for labor.
> That's why I mentioned land and not only housing. In fact in most places the land is more expensive than the building on top.
But this is really not any different -- depending on how you define it land is either a scare resource you can't get any more of at all or something that requires labor to create more of, e.g. by building sea platforms or similar.
And people don't actually need any particular amount of land in order to have shelter. You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter on a given piece of land by building an arbitrarily tall building. In theory there is a limit on how tall a building you could make, but in practice if we built buildings of the largest size we know how to build on the amount of land that actually exists we would have dramatically more housing than is needed for everyone.
So the limiting factor is not actually land, it's construction, which somebody has to do in order for you to have shelter.
> You can build an arbitrarily large amount of shelter
You can, but it isn't done, because of see above. For a lot of people/businesses in power to actually change things, it's often more profitable to defend the status-quo than make the change. It's a "tragedy of the commons" problem - it would end up better for everyone if the change were to be made, but only if it's done collectively - otherwise any individual player would be at a disadvantage.
But my original argument wasn't even about third-party constructed shelter. Even if let's say you wanted land just to put a tent somewhere and call that your home, well you can't without buying said land first, which is often priced disproportionately compared to wages (and there's pressure to keep it that way, where either wages/earning potential are pushed down, or land will just raise in price to match).
Now you're making a completely different argument: Not that the problem is that you have to work in order to buy housing, but that the cost of housing is too high because of artificial restrictions on housing construction.
Which is totally true but is something else entirely -- if housing cost 10% of what it does now, it still wouldn't be free.
> It's a "tragedy of the commons" problem - it would end up better for everyone if the change were to be made, but only if it's done collectively - otherwise any individual player would be at a disadvantage.
It's quite the opposite really. It would be better for anyone individually to build more housing on their land because they would make more money than the construction costs, so in order to prevent that they pass laws prohibiting nearly anybody from doing that.
These laws persist because of regulatory dysfunction. People benefit if the property they own is worth more and the property they might want to buy is worth less -- and any given person doesn't own most property, so the general advantage is to make housing cost less everywhere. But the laws that prevent it are instituted at the local level, in places zoned for single family homes that are predominantly owner-occupied, so the local voters are local homeowners who want local housing prices to go up rather than down. Meanwhile they don't get a vote in what the zoning is somewhere they might want to move to, so the rules make prices go up.
This is a real problem that could be solved by empowering individual property owners to build what they want on their own property, but what does that have anything to do with employers who are largely ambivalent to this? If anything employers should prefer housing costs to be lower so they can attract talent to their locality through a lower cost of living, and pay less in rent themselves.
> Even if let's say you wanted land just to put a tent somewhere and call that your home, well you can't without buying said land first
What are you proposing to do instead? You can't feasibly create more land, and what people actually want the land for is to have shelter. You can create more shelter, but that requires labor. It's never going to be free -- one way or another somebody has to build it. Somebody would even have to make the tent.
We could certainly make it cost less by removing zoning restrictions but less is not free.
Wrong. Profiteers learned ages ago the importance of wielding their capital for political influence to maintain a stagnant pool of unemployed surplus labor by many means, including the prison industrial complex, migrant trafficking, and more. The result is that employers do not compete for mere labor but rather only for specifically skilled labor, meaning unskilled labor is only legally differentiated from slavery and effectively just slavery. Furthermore, most of these so-called unskilled laborers are in fact highly skilled surplus of the skilled labor market, which means the same holds true for a significant portion of the so-called skilled labor pool.
Many unskilled labor jobs also pay more than the law requires, and there is basically unlimited demand for unskilled labor at low wages, so there is only a problem if the cost of living is higher than the wages unskilled labor receives in the market -- which in nearly all cases is because of artificial scarcity of necessities. Because otherwise the low wages would result in a low cost of living as necessities could be produced inexpensively through cheap labor.
If you let millions migrants come to the US to build housing and provide medical care and consequently made housing and medicine inexpensive, unskilled laborers in the US would be better off, not worse off. If you artificially limit the supply of those things so the cost of living remains high, you're screwed regardless of whether there are immigrants, because a marginal difference in the wages for unskilled labor doesn't hold a candle to a ten fold increase in the cost of living.
> Furthermore, most of these so-called unskilled laborers are in fact highly skilled surplus of the skilled labor market
There is rarely a long-term surplus of skilled labor -- or anything -- because that would just cause it to cost less, increasing demand (companies hire more) or reducing supply (people switch careers to ones that pay better).
Because law requires such a low wage that it competes with the cost of being unemployed. Unskilled wages are just survival costs, if even that, just like a slave, and this is why people in those jobs live shorter lives.
> If you let millions migrants come to the US to build housing and provide medical care and consequently made housing and medicine inexpensive, unskilled laborers in the US would be better off, not worse off.
Then why aren't they better off now than before that was done?
> There is rarely a long-term surplus of skilled labor -- or anything -- because that would just cause it to cost less...
It does, of course. Wages for many many skilled labor jobs (whose capacities have proportionally increased faster than average) have decreased very significantly over recent decades when accounting for inflation. This is just common knowledge.
Everything competes with being "unemployed" -- which is another way of saying that you do your own labor. You can pay someone to make your dinner or make it yourself, pay someone to fix your car or fix it yourself, pay someone to make your clothes or make them yourself etc.
Specialization generally wins, even when you're not making a lot of money.
> this is why people in those jobs live shorter lives.
There are multiple reasons why this is the case. The people with the ability to do skilled labor more often also have the ability to do other things that increase their longevity. People who make less money are more likely to smoke cigarettes etc. There isn't a single unified cause, it's many things that correlate with each other.
> Then why aren't they better off now than before that was done?
Because they're not allowed to build housing and provide medical care. Zoning restrictions constrain housing construction, the AMA restricts the supply of doctors and people with legitimate medical degrees from other countries can't just come here and practice etc.
Regulatory capture is a thing. But the medical regulators are captured by the AMA (i.e. incumbent doctors), not Walmart or Comcast, who have no real interest in higher medical costs. The zoning boards are captured by local homeowners.
> Wages for many many skilled labor jobs (whose capacities have proportionally increased faster than average) have decreased very significantly over recent decades when accounting for inflation. This is just common knowledge.
Your argument was that a significant proportion of these people would end up doing unskilled labor. No they wouldn't, they'd still prefer to make $60,000 rather than $30,000 even if their skillset used to pay an inflation-adjusted $70,000. And some of them will even refuse the $60,000 and find a way to change careers to one that pays more.
Keep in mind that no employer/business is providing these perks out of the goodness of their heart - they do so because the market is (was?) extremely competitive, but it's not a given that the market will stay competitive.
Prison.
> The end result is that you work or you die (out of exposure, medical bills, etc). Not much different from the slavery from the old days?
Sounds like your definition of slavery is nobody taking care of you.
If people start using prison as this "one weird trick they don't want you to know" to not pay rent, this problem will be solved pretty quickly too (if it isn't already, as the other commenter suggests forced prison labor is a thing in some places).
I believe shelter and basic necessities should be a human right. So many problems would be solved/improved if people didn't have to spend half (or more, for the lower classes) of their earnings on perpetually renting.
Shelter has to be built on a property and maintained indefinitely, food has to be painstakingly extracted from the land, etc. People have to do that, because there is no extant alternative.
Ignoring land ownership for now, are the maintainers and farmers not to be compensated? That would be actual slavery.
Which leads to this: https://innocenceproject.org/how-the-13th-amendment-kept-sla...
So.. there are some really stark differences. "Wage slavery" does have similarities to an extent, but it is still a world apart.
Still, costs are in line with those wages, so my mortgage was costing me ~$5k/month, my electricity was peaking at $1k/month, my water was $500/month, my property taxes were $1500/month, etc. etc. etc. A high salary doesn't necessarily mean unbound wealth, it just makes living in that VHCOL area comfortable.
Sadly, I still can't afford to stop working, but that's more down to the completely terrible form of "healthcare" that the US employs, and not my actual job.
There's no guarantee it won't become like the UK or most of Europe where software engineering salaries are miserable.
It _should_ matter from a perspective of not paying enough money for an employee to meet basic needs and have enough discretionary spending to not need a 2nd job.
Just a little back of the envelope economics: if everyone thinks the way you do -> labor supply doubles -> wages go down -> working two jobs is now the expectation
Similar economic side effects to having both genders in the workforce. This lifestyle only "works out" so long as most people are unwilling to do what you're doing
Short of some radical changes around the whole concept of "property", I think this may end up being the norm anyway considering property price inflation?
To call one of the cushiest jobs that has ever existed in human history "slavery" because of some minor restrictions on your ability to make even more money on the side...I don't even have the words to describe just how ridiculous you come across right now.
A lot of people will say things like that when they're no (longer?) in position to actually make a difference - it's a safe way to garner sympathy and attention. I can guarantee you he wouldn't have the same opinion if he was still in his position and had political power to be able to actually allow this.
People working multiple jobs are universally frowned upon by the slave masters not only because this allows the slave to be less financially dependent on the master (which means they won't accept as much abuse as they would if they had no other source of income), but also because the extra money affords them a lifestyle that can rival those in higher, more prestigious positions.