According to Wiktionary, a slave is “[a] person who is held in servitude as the property of another person, and whose labor (and often also whose body and life) is subject to the owner’s volition and control.”
Now this is all very well and good, but how do we define “held in servitude?”
I’m not being facetious. If you live in a culture where homelessness is criminalized, and where living rough is grounds police violence, then you are forced into de facto servitude of those who own the means of production and those who own property. We live in a stealth feudal society with extra steps, a state of slavery where our masters are not even required to provide us with food and shelter. And this is apparently an improvement.
Professor Harbinger's School for Villains 