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Comment by jMyles | Hacker News Reader

Colonization has only ended in express terms. In many parts of the world, including essentially all of the developing nations where slavery has expanded in the past half-century, the dominant economic activity are forms of extraction at the behest either multinationals, OPEC, China, or USA.

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If you consider these imperial powers to be ultimately responsible for the mode of production in the countries that they trade with, does it not stand to reason that they have some obligation to assume responsibility for the governance, policy, and policing of these countries?

The Americans are not (to my knowledge) pointing a gun at Bangladeshi sweatshop owners and telling them “You must produce a quota by whatever means necessary.” The Americans might be benefitting from this arrangement, but if they refused to buy these products, it’s not like slave labor would disappear; it would just be redeployed into other sectors. The countries where this slavery occurs have to bear some level of responsibility for the things they permit to happen within their own borders, otherwise they were never sovereign countries to begin with, and they ought to be colonized by those powerful enough to enforce the rule of law.

The worst offender in the present is India with 8 million slaves.

Who do you argue is colonizing India at the moment?

Sure Jan, they can just shrug off close to a 100 years of colonization like it never happened. It's not even been 100 years since it officially ended.

So, let me see if I've got this straight:

- India had been practicing slavery since immemorial times [1]

- Then, the British started ruling the place and after only 2 years in power they abolished slavery in all parts of India they controlled [2]

- Then the British left, slavery returned to India, and it's somehow the fault of the British it still exists.

This sums up quite nicely your argument, right?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India#Slavery_in_An...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India#British_India...

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