Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family
english.elpais.com
english.elpais.com
The Ottoman Empire legally abolished slavery in the 1880s, but there was still illicit yet tolerated slavery in Turkey into the 1930s.
I think in some areas of the Sahel chattel slavery may still exist as a practical matter. Mauritania didn't legally abolish chattel slavery until 1981, for example, but as in other areas it can take decades for reality to match the law, given the laws were often changed under international pressure rather than reflecting any change to the domestic social order.
The fact that serfdom de-facto remained is one of the primary reasons Russia's industrialization lagged the rest of Europe for so long as factories didn't get the initial cheap labour. It was only finally fully picking up steam (pun not intended) when WW1 broke out.
Exactly. Bolsheviks just changed the name from "serfdom" to "collective farms". Mandatory membership where members were not allowed an ID that enabled them to move inside the country and therefore were bound to the farm. The practice continued until the late 1970s.
Slavery is abolished everywhere in the middle east ("except" Daesh/islamic state), and yet this keeps happening. Example after example after example:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/12/fifas-world-cup-ignores-...
https://www.freedomunited.org/news/repression-modern-slavery...
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies...
https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2014/12/domestic-servitude-...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw5v077nyjo
https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/13/i-was-sold/abuse-and-e...
https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/22/united-arab-emirates-tra...
https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-withou...
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2017/11/libya-must-e...
Oh and the royal families keep getting caught in "even more embarrassing" incidents.
Here is Saudi Arabia having a royal murder a slave for perceived insults, then forcing UK governments to allow and forgive the murder (by taking nationals hostage then organizing a "prisoner swap")
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9674420/Saudi-...
Or Qatar:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200619-qatar-prince-accu...
Or Iranian and Iraqi imams and mullahs selling children, girls, but apparently even including the occasional boy, into child prostitution, functioning as pimps and exploiters:
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/W...
Frankly, these days it seems to be quite normal for countries to just sign whatever treaty anyone wants signed ... and just ignore it. Vilifying anyone calling them out on it as culturally insensitive and in all cases ignoring them.
Let's not forget the same happens in the US including by the political elite
I have no idea why we in the west consider that normal and look the other way... What am I saying, I know, oil & VC money...
Some of them also bring their Filipino, India, Nepali, or African slave maids in Europe and everybody looks the other way, they have too much money to be criticized...
They are so brazen about slavery they routinely sell their slaves on Instagram or Facebook ads, with copies such as "doesn't need much food","will sleep on the floor", "will work 20 hours a day"...
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50228549
> "African worker, clean and smiley," said one listing. Another: "Nepalese who dares to ask for a day off."
> When speaking to the sellers, the undercover team frequently heard racist language. "Indians are the dirtiest," said one, describing a woman being advertised.
They are dehumanized at first place, but the level of racism in these places, on top of all that is shocking...
This happens in Europe as well.
It is not legal, but it is the only way the Scandinavian berry market works at all. You don’t even need a huge market for this to be allowed to happen. You just need _a_ market and workers that are desperate enough to be tricked.
"he was lured in with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK"
"The gang confiscated the passports of all their victims"
[0]: (In Swedish) Berry entrepreneurs suspected of trafficking Thai nationals, (2025). https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vasternorrland/barforetag-...
[1]: (In Swedish) Berry pickers (Topic). https://www.svt.se/nyheter/om/barplockare
Both are from SVT, the public broadcaster in Sweden.
They've been engaging in illegal price-fixing, too.
> "In Dubai there's nothing illegal about it"
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=435f366f-4279...
Quoting from my own passport:
"The bearer of this passport may pass it to a third party only if there is a statutory obligation to do so".
Denying the freedom of an employee to end a work relation with their employer & leave, does not pass that bar.
They'll usually make a photocopy of the passport during check-in, then immediately return it.
The vast majority of slaves went to the New World, so that's where most of its effects were felt. Of the 12.5M people kidnapped from Africa, only ~9000 went to the Old World. It just wasn't as obvious of a problem in Europe itself.
An interesting side-effect of this is that a lot of European countries have two relevant dates: the first being the banning of slave trade, the second being the banning of slavery. For example, the UK prohibited any involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, but slavery in the UK itself was only abolished in 1833.
Sort of. France and England abolished slavery within their own territories before the US states did, but it did not extend to their colonies until later. France banned slavery within its home territory back in the 1300s (Free Soil Principle), but continued with slavery through its "Code Noir" (Black Code) in its colonies, where slavery was not permanently abolished until 1848 (it was abolished at the time of the French Revolution but then reinstated by Napoleon). England abolished slavery at home in the mid 1700s but not in its colonies until 1834.
(Like the US North, England and France had very small populations of Africans/others, so it was relatively painless and easy to ban slavery there, while continuing to accept slavery "elsewhere". For the US North "elsewhere" was the South, for England and France it was their colonies. Same principle though.)
Along the same lines, slavery of Catholics was forbidden in Europe all the way back in the Middle Ages. So it was acknowledged to be something bad, that Christians should not do to each other. But slavery of "infidels", heathen/pagan/Muslims/etc., was OK - and not only okay but sanctioned by Romanus Pontifex in the 1400s granting Portugal the authority to enslave "pagans" (basically all non-Europeans) along the coast of Africa. (Incidentally, as some Africans converted to Christianity, this posed a problem (they were no longer pagan and couldn't be enslaved), and so eventually it shifted to being about race and skin color rather than religion.)
The 13th amendment removed the legal concept of slavery (except for convicts) but it was still not a crime to do slavery. Slavery changed shape many times over the years since the civil war (usually involving convicting black people under sham crimes and then selling them as debt slaves or forcing them to sign contracts that rendered them slaves under threat of being convicted for said sham crimes) and can only reasonably be said to have actually ended in the US after Pearl Harbour when concerns that it would be used as enemy propaganda caused the Justice Department to properly prosecute slave owners (see Circular 3591[1]).
The last chattel slave in the US was Alfred Irving[2] and he was released in late 1942. He was kept in chains and was permanently disfigured due to constant physical abuse from his owners. He died in 1960.
[3] is a very comprehensive video essay about the topic.
[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Irving_(former_slave) [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA
Slavery is "illegal".
I'm convinced that the absolute modernity is only a sideshow attraction for the ultra-wealthy to visit Dubai. The real show is the servants.
Whatever we might now think with hindsight of the communist revolution in Russia, if ever there was a country primed for the peasants to rise up against the ruling class, it was Russia.
Russia might have been a land of art, music, dance and literature, but you were pretty fucked if you weren't in the 20%.
And North Korea continues to show that literally nobody cares, really. Because if they did, at least that would've been prevent- or at least stopable with some concessions to China. The North Korean people would've at least been treated as humans if they became part of China and the NK dictator along with the whole government be executed.
China then interfered because they didn't want a US aligned country at their border.
However there have been decades since the affair settled - and I stand by my opinion that if the US and by extension NATO cares whatsoever, they'd have just told China "we won't interfere as long as you free NK citizens into free people".
It would've not been perfect at all, but at least the horrendous reality they are in would've been prevented.
It is still legal in the case of prisoners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
there is zero financial motivation for the state for prevention or rehab or any other activities to reduce imprisonment rates
did I mention disenfranchisement of the imprisoned?
That seems…unlikely.
i.e. its not a good motivation to increase the number of prisoners (even if one looses less money per prisoner, more prisoners will mean more loss), but it does motivate investigating ways on how one can minimize the loss on individual prisoners.
The explosion of incarceration and the private prisons resulting from that largely come from "the war on drugs". The book The New Jim Crow is pretty good if you're interested in the topic.
For state employees (i.e. representatives, judges, etc.)? Some get kickbacks.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
See: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dhs-contractors-told-wh...
Alas, the "kids for cash" scandal was such a big news event that it dominates the results for any search you'd do on the subject of private prison corruption, but it's hardly the only example.
The interests of the criminal justice system on the other hand is heavily financially benefited from the current state of affairs. More incarcerations means more judges, more lawyers, more job security.
Moves to correct this are labeled as “soft of crime” and surely my opponent Congresswoman Y isn’t pro crime?
"What's the financial motivation for the state" is way too blinkered and makes at least 2 different false assumptions. There are other motivations besides financial, and it doesn't have to be the state's own motivation for the state to end up doing something.
Countless government policies and programs exist which give no legitimate benefit to the state or the people, no legitimate motivation, financial or otherwise, yet they exist anyway because they do benefit and motivate someone, financially or otherwise, who has some mechanism of influence to cause it to happen.
This is almost like asking "Why would anyone do something bad?" Gosh golly why indeed? 517,000 reasons and 124 new ones every day.
and the state as all citizens, including those affected by gang and drug related violence also would benefit from dong things differently.
it's those who benefit off the current prison labor system who lobby to keep it running, and they make it seem "natural" and "without alternatives"...
and "the state" (as the tax collecting entity) pays for the prisons and the inmates while the labor "providing" companies benefit off the labor.
it's a very very clever system.
enslavement without being called such.
and I agree, no, "the state" (as the totality of citizens) doesn't benefit.
only "the state" as the entity that's controlled by lobbyists and _pretends_ being by the people, for the people, that has no motivation to change this.
"Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy"
It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude.
Stupid people always say nonsense like this as if no person in prison is innocent.
If you happen to be the one dying for no reason would you consider that just a trivial unfortunate edge case?
Educate yourself:
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/innocence
Every day I am happy many here are techies and not politicians.
Look, you're not entirely wrong. But you're not entirely right, either.
In some states, the prisons are privately run and the prison labour is part of the profit motive. They have no incentive to rehabilitate and the states with these "programs" have some of the highest recidivism rates in the USA.
That also ignores the fact that some people are born into situations that make it far harder to live a "legit" life than others, and I'm not even talking about historical racism as part of that equation (which certainly does contribute).
I'm also NOT saying that prisoners shouldn't be made to work, but it should be outside of a system designed to exploit them.
Prisoners aren't 'slaves'. They are being punished for crimes they committed. Very dofferent than being born into it and bought/sold to the highest bidder.
The punishment is being locked up in a cell. Being forced to work on top of that is the slavery.
Why is it not part of the punishment?
I think it is dependent upon interpretation. Otherwise arresting and locking up can be interpreted as kidnapping and so on.
I do agree that they should be fairly compensated though.
Indeed it is part of the punishment. As an earlier comment in this thread points out from the 13th amendment:
> "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime" (emphasis added by me)
They're not. That's why it's slavery. And slavery of prisoners is permitted by the Constitution, which is the main point here.
AMENDMENT XIII
Section 1. 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.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
And yes indeed you are correct that the sate does commit theft and declare it legal for itself.
Prisoners that are made to perform any useful work that anyone else benefits from are slaves, not merely prisoners.
If you want to invoke the word "logic" you should actually employ it.
I will say it was common up to the end of 70s and somewhat into the 80s. Common here I don't mean that every single person would have a "slave child" at home but you'd know someone or someone that knew someone who did it.
I am not saying it justify this horrible behaviour, but mostly as to say how much worse it could get. Some would just be "Cinderella" style abuse, but other would be physically and sexually abused.
Some reform of policies around de 90s cleared much of the evil practice.
I think by today standards, 99% of people knowing this would have denounced this much earlier. The fact it did not happen in this case is because this family is related to a powerful politician of the region.
Compensation they offer is too little and too disrespectful. It is basically 3 USD a week for the past half decade of forced work relationship. First, it would need to be at least 100x more than that and it would need to put this rubbish in form of people into jail for the rest of their lives.
Wasn't there some mild scandal a decade or so ago where wealthy white American families would adopt kids from Africa or Mexico, only to force them to do housework the whole time?
Well, it's classed as child abuse and the perpetrators ("parents") were punished harshly. So pretty bad, but not remotely the same thing as what happens in the middle east or north Africa.
For the owner or the servant?
The downside is that they get no benefits.
Live in housekeepers are very common indeed in Singapore. However, majority of Singapore lives in Housing Development Board flats that do not have any separate entrance into kitchen.
However, they were paid (I have no idea whether it was a good wage, or not), and had pretty decent quarters (in Morocco). My parents were pretty kind, fairly liberal, people. I would be quite surprised (and shocked) if they took advantage of the servants. I know that my mother made damn sure that I had respect for poor folks.
The hallmark of developed countries is that they're even, mostly egalitarian and developed everywhere.
The hallmark of developing or underdeveloped countries is precisely the staggering levels of inequality.
Not everyone is poor in a developing/underdeveloped country. Quite a few people there live lives that would make upper middle classes in developed countries blush. Life "just" sucks for the majority of people there.
Would you say USA is a developed country, considering for example Los Angeles slums? And there's a bigger inequality between Elon musk and a well paid software developer than between a poor person in a developing country and a rich politician from that country.
I'm not saying anything (directly). We have definitions for these things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country
According to any way we currently categorize developed countries, the US is one of them.
- "The hallmark of developed countries is that they're even, mostly egalitarian and developed everywhere."
- "they go together" (poverty and inequality).
- The US is a developed country.
- The US has a great wealth inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
What you say implies contradictions.
Nope:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_we...
Developed-but-very-unequal, and less-developed-but-more-equal are a thing.
Also, I have my own standard (https://xkcd.com/927/):
Do you prefer perfect equality in poverty, or some inequality and some wealth, a mixture of coexisting inequality and wealth.
Those servants will be richer in a few decades but will still be in that situation.
These are all examples of inequality.
>There's is poor people who exploit other poor people. Poor people that sends children to work for example. Only the rich can use power for evil?
Rich people have greater reach to do evil commensurate with their wealth. It is a matter of such a degree that it becomes a qualitative difference.
>And it's impossible for the smarter one to lend intelligence to another, and to the stronger one to give muscles to the weaker one.
Did you think before you wrote this?
It would be better to just admit that you're wrong.
In a hierarchical organization like a government there will be different power levels.
So, there are inequalities you cannot level. And you suggest that reducing wealth inequality will make the world better. I don't know, I still believe that aiming at reducing poverty is a better goal.
Why? Because without poverty people won't suffer because of survival needs. And without inequality you don't guarantee that there's no poverty.
To me, only a very envious person would put equality over reducing poverty.
>And you suggest that reducing wealth inequality will make the world better. I don't know, I still believe that aiming at reducing poverty is a better goal.
They're the same thing. You only refuse to see it because you expect your personal wealth to fall. You jealously guard a dysfunctional status quo for illogical and selfish reasons.
That's you opinion and is not an absolute fact. At least you can see that it's debatable:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/19/poverty-...
And your suppositions about my motives are wrong.
Edit: my motives are that I simply believe that they are not the same, just that.
That reducing wealth inequality makes a more fair and prosperous world for the vast majority of people is about as much of an opinion as saying that reducing pollutant exposure reduces cancer risk.
And if you claim that those are "simply" your motives, you're not speaking in good faith.
Consider that the URSS and Cuba were about redistributing wealth and it didn't end well there.
And yes, those were simply my motives, I also would like everyone to be happy and capable of attending to their basic needs in the world.
Practically-speaking, inequality is insidious because it enables violations of rights and unjust denial of opportunity even when poverty has been eradicated. Cold comfort, to the middle-class family of people mowed down by a rich motorist who faces negligible jail time because the money they can spend on a lawyer is outside the scope of what the legal system is built to handle.
That the justice can be persuaded in a certain direction with money is a weakness of the system. I don't think you would consider equal and just that every person could influence justice. The problem is the justice system.
>That the justice can be persuaded in a certain direction with money is a weakness of the system
It's a weakness of any system with overbearing inequality. Equal societies don't face this issue to the same extent because those wronged can mount an equal defense or offense as those doing the wrong, at which point righteousness should prevail.
Even with wealth equality, as long as there's scarcity, some people would try to gain advantages over others with means different than money: e.g advantageous connections with others, deception, etc. There's corruption among poor people, and rich people also steal from other rich people.
An utopic idea of equality blocks the capacity of observing how things work.
He says, without citation.
>Even with wealth equality, as long as there's scarcity, some people would try to gain advantages over others with means different than money
No one says that wealth equality leads to an absolutely equal society; that's a straw man. What is incontrovertibly true, and empirically proven to be so, is that societies that are more equal in terms of wealth are less unequal socially, and see fewer negative outcomes that can be attributed to any disparity that does exist, wealth or otherwise. This is because we are talking about effects directly downstream of resource allocation, and monetary wealth is the primary way resources are denominated. Maybe if commodities were priced directly in Twitter follower count or bench press, you'd have a point.
The poor and rich are not equally corrupt (again, something shown empirically).
> The poor and rich are not equally corrupt
He said, without citation. Also it seems you don't know much about poor people.
You should use one.
>He said, without citation. Also it seems you don't know much about poor people.
It is a structural impossibility for a poor person to be as absolutely corrupt from an extrinsic viewpoint as a rich person, as much as it is a physical impossibility for an ant to be as absolutely strong as a bear. You're conflating some measure of (subjective) inner morality with actual effects in the real world.
Happy World Cup.
In the same way there are poor persons who cause a lot of suffering to others without being rich.
As the number of poor persons is bigger than the number of rich people, the accumulated potential for good or evil they have, adding their individual evil or good, is probably bigger than the good or evil potential of rich people
Ghandi was not poor. He was a trained lawyer with experience working abroad who adopted some practices in solidarity with people who were actually suffering in poverty. Just because he wasn't a millionaire doesn't mean that he hadn't accrued significant social capital, and the influence over economic capital that this represented. His capacity for good was rooted in this dual capital access; he did not necessarily have a similar capacity for evil, because social capital is not fungible in the same way that economic capital is.
But without either form of capital, one's reach is commensurately shortened, so no, such a poor person does not have the same capability to "cause a lot of suffering" as someone who is rich.
>As the number of poor persons is bigger than the number of rich people, the accumulated potential for good or evil they have, adding their individual evil or good, is probably bigger than the good or evil potential of rich people
Astonishingly, wealth inequality has ballooned to the point that the holdings of the top percent or so so dwarf that of the rest of the planet that it overcomes the population disparity.
Inequality has no moral characteristics. It is not "insidious." The fact that disparate effort and disparate circumstance lead to disparate outcomes is just that; a simple cold fact.
That some people use their power or wealth to take advantage of others is a moral issue. But again, this is orthogonal to disparity of outcome. Or do you claim poor people never steal from other poor people, or that rich people never steal from other rich people?
Envy is not the basis of poverty, need is.
Your post is proof of the insidiousness of inequality. It allows for outcomes to be warped by the presence or lack of aggregated capital, without presenting a direct attack on outcomes. As long as you are able to limit the contextual scope, you are able to claim a "just world", even when clear injustice is extant.
It is then important to insist that the scope stay broad enough to involve all related implications.
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." This suggests that there is a functional relationship between the size of power imbalances and the amount of corruption that exists. It is not that some people use their power or wealth to take advantage of others; it is that inordinate power and wealth ensures that abuses will occur.
That is not in evidence. You may be thinking of inflationary pressures causing the poverty income level to be adjusted upward. This is not a result of income inequality. It is a result of supply and demand.
> "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."
That is an aphorism, not a universal truth, and holds zero moral weight. You may be judged as corrupt by what you do, not by what you have.
> ...inordinate power and wealth ensures that abuses will occur.
No. This is envy as evidence. It doesn't work that way. Your use of the word "inordinate" is also meaningless from an economic or policy stance. Who decides what is inordinate? What qualifies a level as inordinate?
There is only one equilibrium state with full equality: vacuum. In an economic sense this is where zero exchange of value occurs. It is system-death.
In a just world, you keep what you earn. You reap what you sow. When someone powerful steps out of line you punish them. If they do not, there is no reason to punish them. Pre-punishment because "they probably will" is propaganda from the dictator. We don't want that.
Consider that you just haven't found something useful for me to do.
If it's too much for you, I guess you could stop. If wouldn't be your fault if I couldn't keep things together.
>This is not a result of income inequality. It is a result of supply and demand.
Incorrect. Inequality increases the pool of wealth with which "haves" may bid up the prices of commodities, real property, and services. And they do, effectively increasing demand. Transitively, inequality drives inflation, i.e., local conditions.
>That is an aphorism, not a universal truth
You might want to revisit the definition of "aphorism". (It generally includes the word "truth".)
>You may be judged as corrupt by what you do, not by what you have.
And have another: "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Implicit is that you will hammer nails. Property is intrinsically tied with action. Held power is to be wielded, even when it's not warranted; the only way not to is to give it up.
>This is envy as evidence.
I would love to understand this obsession with envy among the elite. If I take your gun and immediately throw it into the ocean, was that envy?
It's funny to me that you deride a "system-zero" world and then immediately champion a "just world". They're the same thing. And though you may believe in it, I never said I did.
The practical solution to a world with increasing (wealth) inequality is to decrease it. It will never reach zero. That's not the point. It's to affect the balance of power so that when someone powerful steps out of line, it is possible to punish them; so that things earned can be kept (and so that he definition of "earn" may be reasonable itself); so that we're not forced to consider the farce of referring to a reaction to someone's previously-accumulated wealth as "pre-punishment."
>What qualifies a level as inordinate?
One could say that it's relative.
Impossible if there's competition between producers and it's at world scale.
> What if some people are just bad at doing things for themselves?
Tyrannies begin with those kind of ideas.
And inflation is a General increase in prices, not the increase of a specific good.
That's a goalpost move if I've ever seen it. Maybe a No True Scotsman fallacy, too.
Geography confers varying conditions at world scale. Hence, "local" is the window. And producers create cartels unless regulated; wealth accrues to itself, capital returns more than labor. Piketty.
>Tyrannies begin with those kind of ideas.
You can't see me but I'm rolling my eyes.
Pretending to know better than other people what that other people should choose our want - and imposing it - is tyrannical.
>if it doesn't work don't blame capitalism, blame governments
Corporate capture is why government can't function in this regard.
>Pretending to know better than other people what that other people should choose our want - and imposing it - is tyrannical.
No one has to pretend, they can just prove it. That's not tyranny, it's reason.
Do you believe that the same government people that is influenced by lobbying is going to vote to close the ways in which corporations give them money to control their decisions? How could that happen?
> No one has to pretend, they can just prove it. That's not tyranny, it's reason.
Tyrants believe that they know what's reasonable for the people to do with their lives, and as is often there case a lot of people don't agree with them, so then they use force to coerce people to do what they will.
There's no reasonable way to prove how people must live.
I just told you.
>Tyrants believe that they know what's reasonable for the people to do with their lives, and as is often there case a lot of people don't agree with them, so then they use force to coerce people to do what they will.
All of that is true. And it has no bearing here, because we're not talking about tyranny. A society that redistributes wealth because the redistribution of wealth has been proven to promote a healthier society (along objective metrics) is not suffering from tyranny, no matter how much you, personally, feel like you've been wronged. That sense may very well be disordered. A million people shouldn't have to suffer because one person is aggrieved that his advantages were stripped. In this case, your aviation is a confession, and you're the one promoting tyranny.
What I also believe is that reducing poverty is a much better goal than redistributing wealth. Redistributing wealth can be a valid strategy for reducing poverty.
There's is poor people who exploit other poor people. Poor people that sends children to work for example. Only the rich can exploit? You are not using the definition of exploitation from the dictionaries. A stronger or armed person has a power differential with a weaker person. A smarter and less smart person too.
So, exploitation doesn't seem to be related exclusively to wealth inequality. It's a moral thing, not a matter of wealth differences.
A simple narrative of "us-good VS them-bad" is reductionistic.
Another big factor is the victim simply not knowing any better. Not being able to read might have helped with that (and I'd guess she probably wasn't allowed a phone, to keep her isolated from outside).
Point is there's a lot of space between "whips & chains" and "paying below minimum wage". Unfortunately some people are really good at exploiting that space.
Education and a society's culture are certainly important too.
> Education and a society's culture are certainly important too.
Agreed.
That's a good example. Curtailing voter rights is another. And then there's money -> influence on media.
Unlike when you use an app, for the most part, because we're not psychopaths, living with someone every day for months or years causes us to feel a great affinity and care towards them.
I live in a developing country. Some people treat their live-in staff badly. But for many others, this is not the case.
Imagine you are a high-earner and hard worker and so you and your wife get a live-in nanny to assist with childrearing duties. Often, two or three decades later, the live-in nanny is ready to retire, but your children (whom you love) have come to see her as a member of the family, or even as a second mother. Surely you also do. How can you live with someone for 20-30 years and not care about them? You might thus often take care of her for the rest of her life, even though she has her own savings.
(No, I do not have live-in house staff. But I've had the same maid for 7 years and she knows she can come to me if she needs anything.)
How one treats someone else is probably mostly just a reflection of the individual. But it's harder to disregard someone's humanity when they live in your house and you've know them for years.
Yet, the end result is still quite similar to slavery. Why do you suppose the servants stay, instead of living a life of their own? I think you’ll find the answer there.
Are you saying if they were simply paid slightly more money and forced to seek their own food and shelter in whatever abject conditions they could afford, like minimum-wage and rural workers in most first-world countries, they would be better off? Or do you have more insightful suggestions? “Pay more” is always the easy answer people go with, especially while not wanting to pay more for anything, so I’m excited to hear a fresh and unique take on poverty.
I've yet to uncover a case of literal slavery like TFA though. One could argue the workers aren't getting paid enough and I'd agree, but the workers are getting paid.
It was very, very common before that tho. We shouldn't forget so to not repeat.
Maybe public humiliation is better, release names and address.
It is a horrible arrangement, and she should be given a lot more than what she is getting (at the very least, she should be given backpay + pension equivalent to the market rate of her work for all these years), but to treat this case as some sadistic family keeping someone in captivity is overreacting.
And definitely the punishment given is a complete under-reaction and your attempt here to lighten the situation lightens it way too much.
I wouldn't pin judgement on someone elses recommendation nor would I say them being a social worker validates it even more than say some rando guy on the internet. Judge the facts.
Her life was ruined. That is huge. It is an epic crime. Not a mild thing.
How so? We are talking about someone coming from a poor origin in one of the poorest states in Brazil, in the 1970's!
This is the story of a girl whose mother has been working with the family and moved in with them when she was 7 years old. For some reason, after a while the mother gets out of the picture (Passed away? Tried her luck to migrate south but couldn't take her child?), she had no place to go so she stayed with them. It's not like she had a whole range of opportunities ahead of her. What do you think her life would be had she not stayed with the family? Do you think she would be better off if she was thrown on the street?
Yes, it sucks that she grew up in an environment where she was not seen as an equal peer. Yes, it is appalling to think that no one in a seemingly wealthy family never thought of giving the same opportunity to her as they would give to their own kids. Yes, she should have been given a lot more autonomy. Yes, she deserves to get a lot more for what she has done beyond shelter/food/clothes. But all things considered, at that time her staying with the family was the best alternative in a scenario where all alternatives are shitty.
Stop applying today's standards for something that happened more than 55 years ago, specially when you clearly have no grasp on what is like to live where abject poverty is the norm.
What I do know is from my own background. That is, if the same situation happened to her in the US, orphanage can do much better for her. She can have more chances. Even 55 years ago.
You make a convincing argument here, but that's only if all the details of what you say is true and full aligns with the true reality of her exact situation... which I doubt. Do you live in brazil? do you know the history of brazil 55 years ago and the exact living conditions? If not, then your argument doesn't hold weight. On the other hand if you have detailed knowledge and experience with her circumstance then I will concede.
So not only but a start.
Most people in Brazil are so used with the precautions that they have to take to deal with urban violence, they don't get to realize that they are the ones living in their own prisons. I have family members in Rio de Janeiro who get panic attacks at the thought of going anywhere by themselves. I've met grown-up, educated, independent people in college who wouldn't dare to do anything outside of the home <-> campus itinerary on their own.
Certainly provides some perspective on why Brazil might let that woman stay with the family that enslaved her. Granted, Lola's case is unique because she was taken halfway around the world and was an undocumented immigrant for decades. It sounds like that's not the case for this woman in Brazil, but there's a lot we don't know.
I've seen what might be a similar social dynamic in very long, but abusive marriages in the US. A person can understand intellectually that they could have a better life elsewhere, but this has been their life for so long that conceiving of what that life might be like is impossible, or terrifying at best. I resent the abuser no less, but it's hard to know what to make of all of it.
they also give good indication on how to handle topics that don't tickle your personal preferences (for "interesting" or "curious"): silently ignore them
especially if interest is the guidance on downvoting and flagging. the sorting is not according to your personal preferences, as in "social media", but according to the hn hive think. thus negative voting indicates "anti-curious", "anti-conversation", not dislike.
The joke's on them; it likely erodes support for their causes.
This playing out across generations of the family that kept her, the woman 'rescued' but staying with them for the time being, the social context, income levels, how to keep a slave from leaving in today's ultra-connected world, the low $ damages mentioned, relation with other modern forms of slavery...
Plenty to go on there. Btw welcome to HN!
That is a new way of reporting news, that journalist Gortázar seems to have invented here. When you don't know anything about the victim, just make something up from "statistics".
Where else can we apply this technique?
"Maria entered their lives around 1971 — the year Henry Kissinger visited China, John Lennon wrote Imagine, and Mexico hosted the first Women’s World Cup."
Good to know.
"The traditional maid’s room is gradually disappearing in Brazil, but buildings with separate social and service elevators — for domestic workers, visiting technicians, neighbors with dogs, or residents carrying groceries — remain commonplace."
Those are for separating workers carrying broken dusty floor tiles or ladders or a bunch of fiber cables from the other people using the building.
Anyway, ignoring the lacking quality of the journalism, more countries should do like Brazil and call slavery for what it is in legislation, instead of using euphemisms like "human trafficking".
The point of the whole article is to use a single case to illustrate a bigger picture that you seem to deliberately oversee: abuse and exploitation of manual and unqualified workers.
But, then, I saw your Brazilian name and understood. Brazilian jingoism freaks out when Brazil "looks bad" to the world. It is a very common reaction among 3rd world countries. Indians, Pakistanis, Nigerians, etc are just like that too.
Senhor Jobim had to leave hastily for the horse race track, and has asked me to briefly tend to his hacker messages and Kubernetes before I prepare his afternoon coffee.
He regrets that you found his commentary as being picking of the nits, but says that the article itself didn't invite any much broader reflection on the subject matter. He also mentions that no amount of bad publicity could ever make Brazil look worse than their neighbours, meaning Argentina - as he has understood from your hacker name is your home country.
Further, the journalists exploits a crime in her agenda to ignite hatred between the races, instead of focusing on facts or trying to broaden the picture. A bigger picture could for example be that Brazilian law classifies as slavery such crimes as lawmakers and reporters in other countries are afraid to. Which has later been mentioned by other senhores hackers in this thread, for example regarding berry pickers in Sweden and Finland.
He sends you his latest composition, for your enjoyment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGO44D-hMmQ
First, be respectful: I am Paranaense and we consider offensive to be called "Argentinean".
Second, my criticism on disrespect for manual labour is not directed towards Brazil in particular but towards most 3rd World countries, all over Latin America, Africa, Asia, Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe. I'd also stress that, in some but not all of these countries, this disrespect does have racial undertones.
Third, I agree that the article is not explicit in its thesis and is poor on facts. But I forgive it because it is journalism, not sociology or history. Journalism is entertainment, like movies or soap-operas; sociology and history are sciences. Entertainment aims at being easy, accessible and fun, science aims at being deep.
Fourth, I think "your" best composition is not the one you linked, but this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qttuCR18NMU
I think your definition of slavery is highly insulting. Slavery is bad not because two people agree to have this profit sharing scheme as you seem to be implying.
Slavery is evil because one person is nearly fully and entirely controlling another person’s entire life, usually for the “owner’s” gain, without the other person’s consent.
Here’s the thing: you can’t keep someone isolated for 55 years, working them without pay—regardless of whether the victim thinks that they want it or not.
This lady is in her 60s, does she even know any other way to even live? Life with that family may be better than whatever Brazil's equivalent of welfare shelters are.
Seems like that may have been why the case workers left her with that family for now.
This can result in them being exploited again by even more unscrupulous people. The articles clearly mentioned how difficult these cases are to deal with. While they do not go into detail, the above is why.
Its very easy to gain peoples trust when they have no sense of normal anymore, and can you sign this paper, o, we need to go to a friendly notary to help with it. and before you know it, the people just handed over their apartment / or whatever.
There are a lot of good people with will want to help but it only takes one rotten apple to destroy peoples live again. Recently in Europe there was a case of a helper that took elderly their IDs and helped herself to their money. She made 100s of victims. Now imaging that type of person with somebody who probably did not have any proper education and normal independent life experiences that we all had the luxury of having.
In a ideal world, we have proper state funded solutions, with proper oversight to help people integrate into society. Reality is that if any services exist, they are underfunded, often lacking oversight and people fall into the often chasm of cracks.
These type of stories are never clean white and black, but a mix of gray sludge, where we all hope for the perfect ideal solution but often there are not many options. And naivety tend to often do more harm then good.
What the fuck?
Why did the law need the family's "agreement"??
Why is nobody going to jail for imprisoning someone for 55 years??
Idk how the prosecution system even functions without credibility.
Probably the entire adult population gets away with hundreds of offenses per annum on average (judging by the total amount on the books).
Even the most law abiding and most humble decile of Brazilian adults probably still get away with dozens of offenses per annum. That nobody cares to enforce at all.
> "That nobody cares to enforce at all"
Did you not understand what it means for even the most humble adult to be getting away with dozens of offenses per annum?
It clearly is not binding on the “have-nots” either.
Of course there is selective enforcement of some % of laws on the books, that’s true in every country on Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/police-corruptio...
That already implies a huge variation.
Edit: But it still doesn’t “bind” anyone in Brazil in the strict sense. At most, it goes from very loose to extremely loose.
It took me a year to convince her that it was not ok. They took away her passport, phone, she wasn't allowed to go out without them. I was ready to help her but she did not want my help.
In the end I'm sure she had to pay her "employer" for breach of contract since she left early. I think she had less than $1000 saved from these 18 months of work.
The thing that made me angry the most is that the family was incredibly well off, yet thought they deserve a slave (or more than one) at home.
From the article.