> I’m not sure this is true either, but contributing food and housing for slaves is not in any sense paying them, but maintaining them as property, since food and housing is a necessary expense (they wouldn’t be functional slaves otherwise). Its more akin to maintenance on machines.

I can most fully agree with that last sentence. It's very much like maintenance on machines. But I don't think employers see as much difference between labor wages and machine maintenance as you do.

Certainly food and housing are necessary expenses, but there's a lot of room for interpretation there. You can make a business judgment about how well to feed or house your slaves -- or particular favored slaves -- in much the same way that one company might differ with another company over how much to invest in employee morale.

> I think what you’re getting at is that while their labor is compelled, they are somehow compensated for it.

It's a little more complex. Slaves can be compensated in numerous ways; one very common way in the American South was to allow them to practice sharecropping. That would be labor that was not compelled, but from which the slave was entitled to keep some of the gains, whether for direct consumption or commercial sale. (As opposed to ordinary labor, which definitely was compelled and all of the gains of which went to the landowner.)

This model extended to slaves who could provide skilled labor. Their labor was in general not compelled; they often worked as independent contractors, dealing with customers directly. Like the sharecroppers, they were entitled to keep a portion of their earnings, and the rest went to their owner.

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An ordinary slave has some money in his pocket. It might not be very much, or it might be quite a lot -- a slave who administrates a complex organization (presumably for his master the owner of the organization) is a person of much higher status and wealth than peasants have, and in Mamluk Turkey the sultan was, technically, a slave. [1] Slavery isn't about wages or lack of wages.

Slaves are generally distinctive in three ways:

- Slaves are not free to leave.

- A slave's owner has the right to compel their labor by various means, even if that right is not exercised. (And as a corollary, an owner has the right to visit certain punishments on a slave for pretty much whatever reason.)

- If a slave commits a crime, the slave's owner is legally responsible for that crime.

Not all three are required; obviously the Chinese emperor would not be responsible for a crime committed by a eunuch. But these characteristics are much more typical of slaves than unpaid labor is. (Someone to whom only the first point applies is, for reasons not entirely clear to me, called "serf" rather than "slave".)

[1] The Mamluks were a caste of steppe nomads captured in slave raids, and constituted the military. To be eligible to be sultan, you had to be one of them, and you had to have been born free on the steppe, captured, and enslaved -- children of Mamluks inherited the caste status, but those born into slavery were not eligible to rule.

> But I don't think employers see as much difference between labor wages and machine maintenance as you do.

Of course they do. When labor is voluntary, the wage is agreed upon by all parties to the transaction. When labor is not voluntary then only the compelling party need agree.

> You can make a business judgment about how well to feed or house your slaves -- or particular favored slaves -- in much the same way that one company might differ with another company over how much to invest in employee morale.

This is like saying a rapist can choose to give their victim jewelry just like a husband can choose to give his wife jewelry. It ignores all essential differences in order to make a comparison that doesn’t exist.

> Slaves can be compensated in numerous ways; one very common way in the American South was to allow them to practice sharecropping. That would be labor that was not compelled, but from which the slave was entitled to keep some of the gains, whether for direct consumption or commercial sale. (As opposed to ordinary labor, which definitely was compelled and all of the gains of which went to the landowner.) This model extended to slaves who could provide skilled labor. Their labor was in general not compelled; they often worked as independent contractors, dealing with customers directly. Like the sharecroppers, they were entitled to keep a portion of their earnings, and the rest went to their owner.

I’m aware of sharecropping and manumission but I think you’re contradicting yourself when you assert that the slave’s labor was not compelled. It was always subject to compulsion, meaning it was compelled in fact even if it may have taken the form of noncompulsory labor. The slave was still subject to compulsion. There was no option for the slave to decline the arrangement and be free from consequences imposed by the slave owner. A man steals my TV from my house, he’s a thief and he stole from me. Observing that he did not also steal my toaster is irrelevant.

> But these characteristics are much more typical of slaves than unpaid labor is.

You’re neglecting that “compulsory labor” is unpaid labor. You’re asserting a distinction without a difference.

> A man steals my TV from my house, he’s a thief and he stole from me. Observing that he did not also steal my toaster is irrelevant.

A man works as a blacksmith, manufacturing items as demanded by customers and, in every case, exchanging them for cash, which he keeps. Saying his labor is unpaid is false.

Slavery is a legal status, not a salary status.

> Saying his labor is unpaid is false.

It is true because payment is something that one receives as part of an agreement. Slaves, by definition, aren’t able to agree to things unless their owner also agrees.

> Slavery is a legal status, not a salary status.

Correct. Salary is a concept that only applies to free men.