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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2217668" data-attributes="member: 4937">Actually, depending on how broad you deem the word slave to be, the 80/20 rule of thumb would probably imply that out of every 100 people in your population 80 would be slaves and only 20 would be free.I tend to use the word slave to mean the general class of people which are 'not free' and would include serfs, bondsmen and indentured servents.  Some people tend to quibble with that and define slaves as only those with no rights under the law.   The problem with that definition to me is that it shows a real lack of understanding of the breadth of slavery as an institution in history.  Prior to the 19th century, the bulk of people in the world were expressly 'not free', and it isn't really until the 18th century that you see whole societies (England notably) coming out against slavery on moral grounds.   Our modern perception that slavery is an immoral institution is a relatively new thing in the world.Another problem with the limited definition of slavery as being just those people with no legal rights is that it doesn't agree with the definition of slavery used by most of the slave holding societies in history.   For example, in medieval england the serfs were called slaves under the law, but they were ranked in several classes (claudia, lida, etc.) according to the rights that they enjoyed.   Also, there are cases in history were the legal rights of slaves exceeded the rights of non-slaves.   The helots of Sparta were technically serfs, but had inferior legal and social rights compared to slaves.   For example, a slave could be legally freed by his master - a helot could not.  So, once you start adding up people who've gone bankrupt and are paying off debts, share croppers indebted to thier landlords, factory workers indebted to the factory owner because thier expenses exceed thier wages, serfs that are endentured to the land, endentured servants and other sorts of covert slavery to the list of things that we normally recognize as slavery, you realize that in your average 'gritty' world, there aren't alot of people left.Actually, one could make the argument that since the majority of the worlds peoples are not sovereign and enfranchised citizens, that its still questionable whether the majority of the world's people are free.</blockquote>

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