Comment by jacquesm
9 hours ago
And effectively it did: many people are kept in their place by the combined pressure points of debt and employment to stay (barely) afloat.
This is of course nothing compared to the cruelty of real slavery but the effect is much the same, a lot of people are working their asses of for an upper class that can ruin their lives at the drop of a hat. That there are no whips involved is nice but it also clearly delineated who was the exploiter and who were the exploited. That's a bit harder to see today.
Rental versus outright purchase is a weird transition. I have this idea for a faction in a post apocalyptic setting that started out as a libertarian community that idealized a society with zero slavery but found it constantly hiding in arrangements like the one you describe, so they made it very explicit and transactional instead: every member of the community is a central bank, and the currency takes the form of small clay discs with a number and a thumbprint. Anyone can mint their own money, but anyone can redeem money for hours of slave labor with the issuing party. And of course there are rules limiting what slaves can be compelled to do, like no minting more hours and no demanding a specific slave.
For some reason this concept is very sticky to me. I actually think it could work as a low tech monetary regime in a grid down scenario.