Serfs are better than slaves.

[Cleita]

8. Saw first hand a modern system of serfdom in the last century.

When we lived in chile, my parents were friends with a couple who owned a big fundo in the south in the Lake District. This would be a Rancho Grande in Mexico. Mostly they raised pedigree cattle and horses used for breeding, which they sold around the world to people of wealth. But they also grew a variety of food crops too. The ranch had been in the family for generations. The ranch workers were born, lived and died on the ranch, which was thousands of acres. The patron, which is what the rancher was called, was in all respects a lord and he went by the title of Don, like in Don Juan.

He had pretty much sovereignty over everyone who lived on the ranch. He, on the other hand, had the obligation to care for his worker families, providing health care and school for their children, as well as a place to live and enough resources for them to grow their own crops or other resources like a shop for smithing or carpentry or equipment repair that they could do in their free time to earn some pesos. My parent's friends did those things and being the patron was also a doctor his families got good health care.

Now just because the Don had obligations to his serf families doesn't mean that all of them honored them. Isabella Allende writes eloquently about how the workers and their families could be abused with no recourse in her book, "The House of Spirits".

So what I'm saying is if you have serfs you still have obligations to them that they have what they need for life. If you can't do that then you need to pay them a living wage so they can provide for themselves.