Therefore: flagged.
There might be a karma gain from posting this stuff over here, but really there is very little real gain.
Current reaction: if we can't flag something before it generates interesting comments, we should let it go. Seems a shame to kill an article that has already generated a discussion.
Look, I agree: this wasn't Hacker News. Not my point. There should be a "mechanical_fish" rule: if you can't kill not-Hacker-News before mechanical_fish comments, you live with the topic on Hacker News.
I like the system as it is.
I think this article was fine.
Yes, I read this article on Reddit before submitting here. But as far as your assertion:
> not quite sure how it's hacker-news material though
I disagree. One of the first questions that came to my mind, and is indeed very similar to the top comment for this article, is the following: how can the world be hacked, perhaps through startups, so that slavery becomes ineffective?
If an article inspires those kinds of questions, how does it not belong on Hacker News?
You can't solve all the world's problems with technology. And this one is also one that requires good old-fashioned human work.
You're right in a general sense: x and y aren't the solution to everything, for any value of x or y.
However, you're wrong in this particular sense: if you would've read the article, you'd have seen that groups are combating slavery by offering microloans to former slaves to start businesses. So, entrepreneurship can be a solution, in part, to slavery.