Comment by maxwell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxwell | Hacker News Reader

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What are you talking about?

Peace in Europe is shattered. The former President of the United States has been indicted multiple times on dozens of felony charges. R&D on the killer bipedal robots + assassination drones + AI from your favorite sci-fi movies is nearing completion. Full Nineteen Eighty-Four-style surveillance totalitarianism has been rolled out in occupied China and is at the pilot stage in most western countries.

According to the SlaveVoyages project, almost 13 million people were captured and sold as slaves between the 15th and 19th centuries:

https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates

Today, 50 million people live in slavery, according to the Walk Free Foundation:

https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/findings/globa...

Are they spending "too much time staring into their phones, consuming simple carbohydrates, and being sedentary"? The "world is better than it's ever been" for those 50 million slaves? They're just not taking "good care" of themselves?

Can you find any chocolate bars that aren't made from cocoa beans harvested by child slaves in west Africa? (Only ones I've found: https://manoachocolate.com)

Are you saying U.S. police officers extrajudicially executing more Americans in 2019 than mass shooters murdered is "better than it's ever been"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enfor...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

The Bank of England reporting that real wage growth in the 2010s was back to the slowest since the 19th century, and Britons just need to "take good care of" themselves?

https://web.archive.org/web/20161206225850/http://www.bankof...

What's better than it's ever been? TV dramas?

Only commenting on the chocolate, because I don't know much about the rest. There are probably hundreds/thousands of other brands that sell organic chocolate.

I checked the chocolate bars I buy in Germany - 1&2: FairTrade, 3: Rainforest Alliance, 4: organic, "fair trade" without label. Many chocolate bars have the country name on it where the beans grew, for example "Edelbitter Perú 78%". I am pretty sure you can find dozens of similar ones in the US.

Fair point, didn't find many ethical options last I checked but should have revisited, now seeing e.g. https://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ethical-chocolate-compani...

Should have just pointed to the apparent failure of the Harkin–Engel Protocol, introduced in 2001, and Supreme Court victory for Nestle and Cargill in 2021 (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/supreme-court-rules-in-favor...)

Something like two or three billion people have been lifted out of abject poverty in the last thirty years.

Global violent deaths are a fraction of what they were 50 years ago.

The world is making huge progress; you’d never know it from the evening news, however.

PS: The site you link classifies (correctly, in my view) conscription as slavery. I think if you’re going to compare then to now in terms of slavery, you should include conscription numbers in your historical figures too.

My parents and grandparents experienced life from the 1920s to 1950s in Europe. Things were much worse then and much crazier.

Not saying we shouldn’t improve or that we should go back to the “good old days”. But in western countries life has been pretty good the last 70 years compared to before. But my pessimistic/realistic side tells me that we will screw this up and either turn into some dystopia with a few rich people and many poor people or we will just start another world war.

I could address each of these points and show how you've taken a narrow, specific stance to focus on the negative things in the world. I could point to hundreds of instances that show your view doesn't accurately represent the current state of the world or accurately place it in the context of history. It doesn't accurately account for the scale of historic cruelty, violence, famine, war, oppression, etc.

Steven Pinker wrote a whole book dedicated to the topic and I've asked ChatGPT to give us the Clifs Notes:

Historical Rates of Homicide: Using historical records, Pinker demonstrates that the rates of homicide in prehistoric tribes and ancient civilizations were much higher than in modern societies. For example, he cites studies of prehistoric grave sites where a significant percentage of skeletons show signs of violent death.

Decline of Violent Punishments: In medieval Europe, punishments like drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, and public disembowelment were commonplace. These have been abolished in modern times in favor of more humane treatments. Wars and Battle Deaths: Despite the two World Wars, the rate of deaths in interstate wars has declined since the mid-20th century. Pinker highlights the long stretches of peace between major powers and the decline in the number of genocides post-World War II.

Slavery and Torture: Practices such as slavery, once accepted and widespread, have been abolished in most of the world. Similarly, the use of torture has seen a significant decline, especially in Western societies.

Treatment of Minority Groups: Pinker discusses improvements in the rights and treatment of women, racial minorities, children, and LGBTQ+ individuals over the past centuries. Acts like domestic violence and hate crimes, which might once have been ignored or condoned, are now prosecuted.

Animal Rights: There’s been a growing concern for the well-being of animals, leading to changes in hunting practices, animal farming, and entertainment. Child-rearing Practices: Physical punishment of children, once seen as standard, has declined in many parts of the world. Many societies now view it as unnecessary or even harmful.

Data from Non-state Societies: Pinker contrasts the rates of violent death in non-state societies (like hunter-gatherer tribes) with state societies, noting that non-state societies often have higher rates of violent death.

Comparative Data: Pinker compares different periods and cultures, illustrating that Enlightenment-era Europe was less violent than medieval Europe, and that the 20th century, despite its wars, was less violent in terms of individual risk of death than previous centuries.

Haha, yeah, I read the book too, no bland autogenerated pap with zero citations necessary. It clouded my worldview and made me complacent and content with my privilege in the early 2010s. The other usual citation here is Hans Rosling.

Think any of the 50 million slaves have had the chance to read the erudite works of Steven Pinker?

You haven't addressed any of my points, haven't pointed to a single instance of inaccuracy in anything I cited, and haven't provided a shred of (parochial-sounding) "historical context."

Here's a book recommendation for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Here is what's being counted as slavery from your source: Forms of modern slavery include slavery by "ownership" ("chattel" slavery), government conscription (forced military service or government labor), forced prison labor, forced migrant labor, debt bondage (slavery until debts are paid), sexual slavery, forced marriage/child marriage, child labor, and forced begging. With the definition of modern slavery in mind, we can now move on to examining the statistics.

Your 13,000,000 slave number is only chattel slavery. You're comparing apples and oranges to better make your point.

Chattel slavery was legal between the 15th and 19th century, so slaves were uniquely accounted for accurately during that time. Now that slavery is officially illegal (unless the government has a good enough excuse), instead of legal, accounted for chattel slaves you get the de facto / black market / "technically-not-slavery" categories you describe and the job of estimating counts becomes more difficult.

Sure, "modern" slavery is more akin to historical/ancient slavery (i.e. ostensibly based on punishment, debt, or civil status), and yes 19th century Southern American slavery was particularly brutal, with cotton becoming the world's top cash crop on the economics of the cotton gin + slave labor.

But my point wasn't how many slaves there were between the 15th and 19th century, use any number you like, we all have some sense of how bad things were. My point was that there are tens of millions people living in slave-like conditions right now, while your point seems to be something like, "but it's modern slavery!"

Interesting. Sounds like the HN rules need a new clause, "No accusing other commenters of writing comments using LLMs".

Accuse? The commenter said they "asked ChatGPT to give us the Clifs [sic] Notes."

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