> The genius of contemporary slavery isn't the whip, it's the W-2. It's not the chain, it's the mortgage payment. It's not the overseer with a gun, it's the IRS agent with a lien.

Perhaps, though, the difference between slavery and whatever thing we've got now is that in slavery there was a particular master. Who is our particular master now? 

I'm sure some might say the ruling class or something, but I'm not fully convinced they are free from enslavement themselves. 

In a way, we are slaves to our own civilization or our society or community (perhaps too specific a word here). It's like we have built this complicated structure that affords us quite a few benefits, but it's also a web out of which we can never escape...which starts to sound like slavery.