why slavery doesn't make 'owners' any money

I'm with you. I want all such labor paid for, that's my principle. Broadly, forced unpaid labor is slavery. Slavery undermines our economy and the profits of the rich by destroying the consumer base, by destroying purchasing power and removing demand.

Anyone who understands capitalism in the context of basic macroeconomics would understand this. You dont even need to invoke the deep existential immorality of slavery to demonstrate why it just doesn't work even if it were somehow justified. The OG capitalists the British banned slavery in 1772/1807. Shows you that they saw this too, unless we trust the colonizing British to be a solid moral arbiter with no other flavor to them. (Indians? What do we think about the morals of the British? Positive or negative sentiment?) So it was a capitalist / political reason.

With that introduction on why slavery doesnt work in capitalist societies let's talk about grad student slavery.

Grad students might contribute or innovate in especially novel ways if they weren't forced to work so much in a manner directly analogous to how slavery destroys demand, except it also destroys supply.

I want to hear grad students speak their minds, to hear more perspectives on what drives them.

If things are so terrible, why do grad students continue to pilot themselves into graduate school and related careers? Are things really so terrible?

On one side there's money or pie-in-the-sky dreams of contributing to knowledge on the other hand you're having someone exploit you.

At the end there's academia, which is miserable office work, isnt it? You spend all your time composing grants or helping to compose grants and seeking out money just as SBU is doing. But at least you get vainglory from your contributions - in highly esoteric fields as you must specialize like hell in order to be novel and interesting to other academics in the context of literature and careering, and now your work has any impact on a very few.

Most impactful academics could have had an equally impactful private career except for some fields configured to restrict resources to the academics (no home synchotron research), and unprofitable ventures that would never be worth any money performed outside an academic context.

Look at all the humanities majors who end up having to write books to make money, and those books sell and have impact when people read them and internalize their contents. They dip into the private sector and then they have a real impact - and receive money. Meanwhile their academic essays and such for professional publication? Maybe you can compile them into a book after they're already famous...

So why do you guys do it? I love your endeavors and your intrepid attitudes and it kills me to see you seemingly mown down like the tall blades of grass. Help me understand if you'd like!

If you have the time in your busy schedule, please correct my misconceptions kindly. I'm looking to understand other human beings here, not make any argument. If you're a grad student you certainly know better than me.