I mean, slavery is a historical norm. I'd rather not have it back.

When has that ever been the historical norm?

Even the most closed societies (say, East Germany, the USSR, and the DPRK) only accomplished a fraction of what's now technically possible, and that historical analogue through a massive human labor force.

It's been the historical norm for all of time, except the extremely recent past.

The norm is that you're born somewhere and you stay there forever. Everyone there knows you and they've known you since you, or they, were born. If a traveler happens to show up, everyone can recognize immediately, by looking at their face, that they're from somewhere else. Strangers get low levels of trust.

There have been cities for ~3000 years+, and a panopticon has never been the standard due to the logistical cost of establishing what we now have.

Urban centers where that doesn’t hold have been around for thousands of years.