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Comment by aksss | Hacker News Reader

I believe there are more slaves today than ever in the history of the planet simply due to population growth. While everyone WE know thinks slavery is morally evil, most of the world does not hold that view. In fact, I would say the default human view (looking at all cultures across time memorial) is that slavery is the rule not the exception. That doesn't go away with modernity, it goes away with culture.

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There’s also a significant conversation about mere illegality and social rejection not actually doing much to address the underlying tendency to exploitation that (a) has prevented reconciliation and relief for formerly enslaved people and their descendants for more than a century and (b) is woven through the labor model common even in the West. Exploited paid laborers aren’t in the same category as enslaved persons, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of believing that economic injustice has been meaningfully addressed.

No, we’re talking about actual slavery in modern times, not exploited labor. Actual slavery is still very much a thing.

To make room for slavery mentally you have to believe that some people are subhuman or at least beneath the threshold for human rights.

What's surprising to me is that it's become more common to describe people you dislike as subhuman and to for people to support violence or cruelty toward them. Similarly there is a trend to see hatred and anger as positive goods.

I would avoid analogizing this to the petty political fads of the west. Actual human slavery is still a very real thing in much of the world. Slavery is likely less about making mental room so much as being raised in an environment where it’s normalized. In other words, the mental room was allocated in the new construction of the world view more often than remodeled.

Who is "WE"? The western world is perfectly happy with prison labor and other exploitative "voluntary" working conditions.

> most of the world does not hold that view

“most” is a lot. Which parts of the world?

> While everyone WE know thinks slavery is morally evil

Who is “we”?

Out of curiosity, which parts of the world is actual slavery a normal thing?

Depends on how you define it.

If you spend pretty much all waking hours dedicated to some task you don't care about entirely to avoid dire consequences I'd say you are close enough. People might still want to use a different word to describe the same thing but it requires they care more about appearance than substance.

No, you are not close enough. This minimizes the seriousness of actual slavery to an extraordinary degree.

It does? In what way?

I think you underestimate the "normal" labor conditions in some places.

And I think you underestimate the reality of actual slavery.

There is nothing remotely comparable between slavery and a modern job. Feel free to make a more substantial argument as to how they are than "it's close enough"

You underestimate the reality of some "modern jobs" out there. There are garment workers in Bangladesh locked inside factories so we can enjoy cheap clothing. There are miners in the Congo working under militia control. There are migrant laborers in Gulf states with their passports seized, forced to work 12 hour shifts every day.

Some modern jobs absolutely contain elements of coercion, abuse, and exploitation that are comparable to forms of slavery.

I think the point should not be to do away with the term nor water it down but to fight the offending elements across the board.

I think you are just refusing to acknowledge that we really haven't improved all that much as a society. It's easy to define slavery in a way that you can say we got rid of it so you can pat yourself on the back for being enlightened and then proceed to not care about any working conditions close to it. Fact is that many people are forced to do jobs that no one would want to do.

This seems like a fruitless back and forth. To discuss modern slavery, specifically, we need to be clear that we're not talking about the hyperbolic characterization of low-wage or even to some degree exploited labor. Exploited labor (broad term) != literal slave labor (specific). At the same time, we need to understand that many workers around the world do not have the option to leave, even if they are compensated. To merely call this exploited labor can belie the fact that it is adjacent to if not identical to slave labor.

Be that as it may, "exploited labor" is too broad a term without qualifiers to be using it synonymously with slavery. A foreign-national on an H1-B visa in the US working in an IT body shop can be exploited labor (we all have stories), but nobody in their right mind would equate that with slavery. This example is just to illustrate how broad the "exploited labor" label is. Many people are not aware that modern day slavery exists, so it's important to be very clear that by narrowing the terms we use. It doesn't mean we shouldn't care about exploited labor, just a call to respect the nuance in language.

There is this

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

The 13th amendment has a penal exception clause:

“ Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

So one might say, slavery is normal in the USA

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