There are now more slaves in the world than at any point in history

The question really is how to stop it.

It seems (to me) that any attempt to stop it would require two economic prerequisites: a value of labor high enough to support a living wage and economic apparatus that made employment gainable through a regular mechanism (like a corporation). To clarify the first point, by living wage I mean a wage that someone can live independently on, not some notion of cable TV and a Honda for all. The second point is that employment must be available in a way that normal people can find and attain it. For example, in the US I can look through want ads, interview with a corporation, and while it might be hard in a down economy it is possible to attain.

If the value of labor is such that it doesn't produce the value needed to gain a living wage, slavery becomes too easy. People won't fight it enough because they don't have another option. If a government is so corrupt and unstable, even subsistence farming can be unworkable. Likewise, depending on the land and water, subsistence farming can be unworkable. In the US, the value of labor is very high for various reasons: stable government, lots of capital goods for labor to use, good education, etc. In some places, the value of labor can be so depressed by factors like those that it becomes difficult to get an independent living. For example, if you try farming and corruption abounds, you might have your food stolen by thugs to the point that you're starving. Labor becomes something you can't subside on.

Likewise, in many places, corporations don't want to do business. There are plenty of places that aren't up to the standard of the US or Europe that nonetheless are stable enough to reasonably do business in. For example, Egypt has a pretty high corruption level, but you don't expect street thugs to dominate the economy. You can't do business in some areas unless you're willing to be a corporate quasi-governmental organization and that costs a huge amount of money. In fact, corruption really becomes a scale and as corruption rises, the value of labor drops because a lot of the value that labor produces goes into buying protection and paying bribes.

Of course, attaining both of those are hard things to do. I'm hesitant to suggest any course because I don't know that one has ever been successful. As much as we complain (wherever we are in our computer connected world) about the crap we have to deal with, we're very lucky.

Are they using the same standards of comparison? There used to be a lot of people working for bare subsistence with no possible way of escape, even if they weren't labeled slaves... maybe the standard could be whether someone is bought and sold, but at any rate one should use consistent standards over time.

Education, is something we can help with. Like the author says, a people need to feel the yearning to be free -- a desire so strong they cannot control it. An education, one untainted by slavers, can provide the mental skills needed for such thoughts.

Has this rise been proportionate with population growth?

but who's counting?

It's an interesting article.. not quite sure how it's hacker-news material though, seems much more like Reddit material. And guess what, that's where it came from - it's been at the top of http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/ for a couple of days now.

Therefore: flagged.

There might be a karma gain from posting this stuff over here, but really there is very little real gain.