system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
Are you familiar with feudalism? Serfs? Peasants? Share-croppers? Slavery? Immigrant labor during the Industrial Revolution? If you think exploitation and working for peanuts is a new problem you need to go back to history class. Society’s problems may look different, but they’re the same issues any non-subsistence community has across history.
gpt
I would argue that the social nature of that work, and how embedded people were in a community, is the key difference to our exploitation now. Today we are alienated from each other and suffering privately.

Additionally, the forces economically exploiting us now are abstracted. We can’t see the slave master or the feudal lord in our every day lives, so we can’t clearly draw the line between our suffering and why it’s happening.

I think the core difference is; if we can’t see each other and don’t see our masters, we turn inward and can only blame ourselves for our situation and our inability to cope.