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Comment by onetimemanytime | Hacker News Reader

slightly off topic: amazing how far we have come, and how much more we have to go. You could walk into a market and go home with slaves, totally yours, to do whatever you pleased with your property.

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And we're not that far removed from it - my grandmother knew former slaves and her grandmother was a slave.

In many places in the World, we're not removed from it. Slavery is still an issue almost everywhere, even in the United States[1], it's just that it now takes the form mostly of domestic slavery and sex trafficking. Other parts of the World still openly practice forced marriage and bonded labour.

1: http://www.endslaverynow.org/learn/slavery-today/domestic-se...

What part talks about the US?

The section titled Domestic Servitude in the United States.

This man was a slave in the US in the 20th century. Amazing story.

https://www.amazon.com/Emancipation-Robert-Powerful-Twentiet...

> You could walk into a market and go home with slaves, totally yours, to do whatever you pleased with your property.

then: people as property

now: people as a service

Today most of the stuff you bring home from the market was either made with slave work, or with machine work. The latter is not unlikely to have even worse impact on human lives on a great scale.

I think development of technology was often motivated by finding means of freeing slaves from atrocious work to give them dignity; if a machine could be built doing the same, that allowed some slaves to escape. Ultimately, this showdown can be seen in our field where many are motivated by similar principles whereas others still want to keep the control of others, warping the rules to their benefit.

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