Foraging (or farming, hunting, etc) is involuntary. Nature has compulsive power via biological needs and imperatives.

The difference lies in the fundamental difference between natural law and synthetic human systems. Entropy isn't your master, it's a fact of your own existence.

By contrast, the present economic system is a synthetic construct made by other humans to exploit you, designed with largely that purpose, co-opting your biological needs for coercive power, and doesn't necessarily need to happen.

That's what makes one slavery and the other not.

The difference is so obvious, I actually am confused why you think conflating physics with political norms was appropriate.

Very insightful question. This gives me an alternative context in which to frame the "wage slave" concept. Thank you.

the distinction is that there is a willful effort to exploit and to enslave on the part of someone (be it a person, corporation or market

>> Urbanization fundamentally has been engineered to create "wage slaves"

> Suppose someone was born out in the forest, and there were no cities, no societies, no technology. Would you call that person a sustenance slave? Would you say that their foraging was involuntary?

No, they are not a slave because they have no master except nature.

A wage slave has at least one master: his boss and the system that forces him to work for one.

They don't have a boss, they can't be fired, they don't generate wealth that someone else keeps. On the other side there are huge material benefits to coordinating with many people, even if that coordination is done via a system that exploits you. Not a good comparison.

depends if their mom and pop sent them to work the fields. There's many such communities throughout the world. Some even keep real slaves. (particularily in Saudi Arabia)

Most of society (and the wage slave concept) is about human farming.

would you say you are a farmer or livestock?