serfdom

A nobility is born and serfdom becomes the norm.

Could you describe a few of the key differences between the hierarchies of the English and Swedish monarchies of the 1600s that were due to serfdom?

Orthogonal to all that, of course, is the generally scummy practice of reducing these folks to serfdom.

In a reasonable world the difference between a lower and higher paying job would be toys, not serfdom vs.

Peasantry wasn't slavery, but they were serfs, and in the end serfdom didn't end up being very different to slavery.

Or at least, it is for those who are doing everything to make this 'contractor economy/road to serfdom' a reality.

It isn't, because it's identical to the command-and-control structure of non-feudal imperial and absolute monarchism, neither of which require serfdom.

The Twelve Articles from the German Peasants' War also called for an end of serfdom.

There was no serfdom in which peasants were permanently attached to specific lands, and were ruled by the owners of that land.

It also allows companies to force modern day serfdom on their knowledge employee.

The Diocletian program led to the depopulation of the cities, serfdom for farmers, and the collapse of civilization into a prolonged Dark Age.

Your thesis would mean there are some intrinsically important differences between the absolute monarchy in England and the absolute monarchy in Sweden, because one was based on serfdom and the other was not.

Modern people do sometimes call themselves "wage slaves", after all, and slavery existed for far longer than serfdom.

Already asked in "Who will determine it?" It's really not a "comfortable form of serfdom".

The notion that "you should feel lucky just to have a job" has such a firm grip on the imagination of the American worker, that we've lost all sense of class consciousness and are accepting a return to serfdom without even putting up a fight.

As your third link says, the "Norwegian serfdom" social system for Norwegian lower class farmers 1) started in 1750, so well after slavery was firmly established in the American colonies, and ended in 1860, that is, before the US abolished slavery, and 2) was "not actually in serfdom by European standards".

Recommend reading Hobbes' Leviathan and Hayek's Road to Serfdom, if this topic interests you.