There are real benefits to the usual employment arrangement that have nothing to do with power asymmetry or making it easier for the government to turn people into serfs. The employee might benefit from that arrangement because it lets her insure against inevitable random fluctuations in productivity, and stabilize her income. (Newsflash, "profit sharing" is a bad thing for most employees. It's not what they generally want.) OTOH, the employer can lower workers' turnover or 'churn', and incent them into contributing to long-term enhancement of firm-specific capital. Building this sort of capital is in fact one of the main ways in which workers can contribute to any organizational endeavor; even though it generally happens tacitly, it can be far more relevant in practice than any overtly assigned 'tasks'.