There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History
alternet.org
alternet.org
A few points:
- Most girls were not slaves per se, kidnapped and hold by force. All, as far as I can tell, were driven to this by poverty, lack of any prospects in the village of birth or both.
- I am not against prostitution as a job, especially since I've seen it done successfully and with quite a bit of entrepreneurial spirit. But in some conditions it can be worst then anything you can imagine. I am especially suspicious of anything that looks organized. I'd guess this is a direct consequence of it being illegal - Amsterdam seems to have managed to make it both organized and civilized.
- I'd have liked to make some comments about corruption, politicians and the way things seem to be "settling in" in the last years, but it's all speculation so I'll abstain.
Yet today, after the deaths of 360,000 Union soldiers, after over a dozen conventions and 300 international treaties, there are more slaves than at any point in human history.
This just seems like a bunch of self-promoting nonsense. His great-great-great-grandfather didn't shed blood with the idea that after the US Civil War was over slavery would be eliminated from the face of the Earth forever and ever. The point was to eliminate US Government legal acceptance of slavery.
Thus slavery in the United States is now illegal, severely increasing the costs and the risks of operating a human trafficking enterprise. That's all that we really can do.
> While that may sound like a very low price for human life, consider that five hours from where I live in New York -- a three-hour flight down to Port au Prince, Haiti, and an hour from the airport
I find this a bit disingenuous. 'Just five hours away' implies something that is a lot closer than New York and Haiti. At least he was nice enough to qualify himself, but stating like that comes across as trying to make this emotionally-charged rather than a rational discussion.
> They asked for $100, and I talked them down to $50. Now to put that in context: Going back to the time when my abolitionist ancestors were on their soapbox, in 1850, you could buy a healthy grown male for the equivalent of about $40,000.
I see plenty of things wrong here. Is that $40K USD? Is that $40K USD in today's money or in the value of the dollar in 1850? What does it cost to make a living in Haiti? How far will $100 or $50 US go?
There's also the difference that when slaves were being sold for $40K is was to put them to work in a money-making enterprise (i.e. plantations) and the slaver traders were selling them in a US market. Plantations owners weren't shipping themselves across the seas to buy slaves directly in Africa. For that matter, today the costs (and risks) of travel are hugely less than they were in the past.
In this example, he's going to another country and buying a child that will make him no money (housework and personal sexual favors are not a stream of money). Not only that, that $50 or $100 does not account for how he would them import that child back into the US. I would venture a guess that -- especially nowadays -- it's pretty expensive to get papers to bring a slave-girl child into the US (at least through 'public' ports of entry like airports).
> If you were to plot slaves on the map, you'd stick the biggest number of pins in India, followed by Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan. There are arguably more slaves In India than the rest of the world combined.
And yet, if you look at international efforts or American pressure, India is largely let off the hook because Indian federal officials claim, "We have no slaves. These are just poor people. And these exploitive labor practices," -- if you're lucky enough to get that term out of them -- "are a byproduct of poverty."
Let me be clear, the end of slavery cannot wait for the end of poverty. Slavery in India is primarily generational debt bondage, people whose grandparents took a debt.
Places like India have grown in population since the time of slavery in the United States. I would really like to see numbers based on % of population for these countries rather than raw numbers (and historical percentages for comparison, obviously). India especially seems to have problems with this due to population density and the caste-system that their society still holds on to.
I'm interested if this is an increase in the percent of the population that are slaves, or just an increase in the number of slaves because the population has exploded across the board. I'll admit that it's also possible that there is an increased demand for slaves as the Indian middle-class has taken off. I remember reading that a lot of Indians work on visas in the US for a while, but end up moving back to India because when their wives move over here they are disappointed that the middle-class doesn't have servants (as one in India would expect to have at that income level).
> Let me be clear, the end of slavery cannot wait for the end of poverty. Slavery in India is primarily generational debt bondage, people whose grandparents took a debt.
If this is the case, I hope that he's including 'indentured servants' in the numbers of slaves when he's looking all the way back into history. Indentured servants were often in the same situations he's describing now (even though most elementary school textbooks like to gloss over that fact by claiming that the servants were 'only' there to work off a debt and they were free to leave when they were done; conveniently leaving out the number of servants (or an estimate) that actually worked off their debt).
> They can also get involved with Free the Slaves. And they can talk about the issue more. Barack Obama is still setting his foreign policy agenda. He needs to hear from all of us that the true abolition of slavery needs to be a part of his legacy.
Do you really think that any US President is going to wipe out all slavery world-wide within a single term through only foreign policy decisions? Do you even believe that it's possible in the short-term without some sort of war/bloodshed?
2. I channel that into a comment here because I found the article through Hacker News
3. I feel my comments could generate discussion. I could be completely wrong/off-base in my thought process, hopelessly naive on a topic or completely mis-informed.
4. I also enjoy the Hacker News/YC community here, and I feel that by pointing out these things that irk me (or adding additional commentary to some of the points that the article makes) I will enrich the community. I guess I should note that I'm not just pointing out grammatical errors or complaining because 'beg the question' wasn't used correctly.
> Thus slavery in the United States is now illegal, severely increasing the costs and the risks of operating a human trafficking enterprise. That's all that we really can do.<
No, there's quite a lot more we can do. Foreign policy is all about influencing what goes on beyond your own borders.
> I see plenty of things wrong here. Is that $40K USD? Is that $40K USD in today's money or in the value of the dollar in 1850? What does it cost to make a living in Haiti? How far will $100 or $50 US go?
The word "equivalent" in the original article is clearly meant to convey that it's $40k in today's money. (as would even a tiny amount of knowledge of economic history, surely?)
I don't know how far $50 will go on the average Haitian salary, but surely part of his point is that in this case there is a population (visiting American tourists) for whom $50 is disposable income. It was never the case for historic US slavery that the price of a slave was anything less than an investment.
(And slave importation may not be the end goal. Maybe you just want a slave for two weeks while you enjoy your holiday. Is that less reprehensible?)
> Places like India have grown in population since the time of slavery in the United States. I would really like to see numbers based on % of population for these countries rather than raw numbers (and historical percentages for comparison, obviously)
Well, yes, comparative numbers would be interesting. (and I'm fairly sure nobody would be surprised to learn that there is less slavery per head of population than previously - but does that make it any less bad?)
I don't think human misery works on the calculus you're trying to apply. One million people in slavery are going to be fairly unhappy, whether they're embedded in a population of 50 million or 5 billion. If the number of people in slavery is increasing, that's bad, even if it's going down as a percentage.
> Do you really think that any US President is going to wipe out all slavery world-wide within a single term through only foreign policy decisions? Do you even believe that it's possible in the short-term without some sort of war/bloodshed?
Do you really think that's what he's asking for? Do you really think an appropriate alternative is just to shrug your shoulders, put it in historical context and do nothing?
Do you really think that if something can't be fixed immediately, or its fix isn't immediately obvious, we should just not bother thinking about it?
My point was that he was acting like the Civil War was a 'war to end slavery world wide' and he almost comes off as surprised that a Civil War years-ago in the US hasn't affected the slave trade on the opposite side of the planet. The point of the Civil War (in terms of slavery) was to abolish the plantations and make the slave trade illegal (i.e. to 'free the slaves').
Abolishing the legal trafficking of slaves is one step in the process, obviously, but a major step nonetheless.
> It was never the case for historic US slavery that the price of a slave was anything less than an investment.
This was mostly due to the cost of trafficking in the slaves. If I go down to Haiti the slaves that I could buy there aren't shipped from the other side of the world. If one wanted to buy a slave in Africa in the early 1800's I'm sure it would have cost you a lot less than right off the slave boats in the colonies. Even shipping a boatload of slaves around the world now would probably cost a lot less than it did then.
I guess what really irks me about this -- and my point -- is that presenting the low-cost of purchasing a slave today comes across as shock-value to get an emotional response. And the response that he seems to be going for is to get people thinking that globally humans have de-valued human life more now than in the past. My argument is that you can't compare the price of a slave in the 1800's to the price of a slave now and use the severe difference in price as proof that the people of the 1800's put a higher-value on human life.
> (and I'm fairly sure nobody would be surprised to learn that there is less slavery per head of population than previously - but does that make it any less bad?)
Doesn't make it any less bad, but it feels very deceptive to use raw numbers like that without presenting relative numbers. It feels like they are trying to get people to reach the wrong conclusions, but with the right intentions.
> I don't think human misery works on the calculus you're trying to apply. One million people in slavery are going to be fairly unhappy, whether they're embedded in a population of 50 million or 5 billion. If the number of people in slavery is increasing, that's bad, even if it's going down as a percentage.
Maybe the problem here is that I'm not mainstream enough to be the intended audience. I feel like I want to see all of the numbers, and when numbers are pushed off to the side, it feels very deceptive to me.
Aside from that, I feel that the best way to measure progress is whether or not the numbers are going down as a percentage. Especially compared to the percentage of population growth. If the number of slaves goes decreases by 2% and the population grows by 1%, I see that as a net win. I also think that it's unrealistic to think that we will ever get the number of slaves down to 0, though I would hope it's possible... even if it has to be on the long-long-term.
> Do you really think that's what he's asking for?
He said: He needs to hear from all of us that the true abolition of slavery needs to be a part of his legacy.
That comes off to me as too positive. That sounds like he thinks President Obama is going to abolish slavery. 'The true abolition of slavery' will not be part of Obama's legacy unless he actually abolishes all slavery.
I'm all for better foreign policy regarding slavery, don't get me wrong, but I thought that this guy's message was too positive. Better US foreign policy regarding slavery is a win as long as 1 slave gains freedom over it, but I daresay that foreign policy alone might not make a dent in world-wide slavery for at least a decade (though I'm really pulling that number out of nowhere; feel free to contradict me).
In general, I'm not disagreeing with the need to combat slavery. I'm disagreeing with some of what this guy is saying because it's coming across as deceptive (even though the intentions may be good) and too overly optimistic (I believe in setting realistic goals).
There is definitely some funkiness going on with the numbers here, but I'd point out a few things.
1) In an interview like this, you wouldn't really expect to get the full set of numbers.
2) There is a theory that you need to grossly overstate a problem for anyone to do anything about it. In general, I think this is true, most people don't respond to "half a percent of the world's population is in slavery" even though this is an absurdly high percent (assuming you agree with his definition).
Overall I agree with you that having more numbers would be informative, I just don't think that the lack of numbers in this article is representative of anything.
My argument is that you can't compare the price of a slave in the 1800's to the price of a slave now and use the severe difference in price as proof that the people of the 1800's put a higher-value on human life.
Sure, but the point is that moderately rich people can now go somewhere and acquire slaves and have no need to even treat them so well as to give them a place to live and some minimum amount of food since if you lose one, another one isn't too expensive.
That presenting the low-cost of purchasing a slave today
comes across as shock-value to get an emotional response.
And the response that he seems to be going for is ...
I feel like I want to see all of the numbers, and when
numbers are pushed off to the side, it feels .. deceptive
But here he's just presenting a solid, straightforward bit of data: the retail price.
You said that this is (or feels) a bit disingenuous -- giving us data out of context to provoke emotion; NY isn't Haiti; it's hard to get the slaves across borders; slaves were money-making operations in the past and aren't anymore, which is why the price is down.
Incidentally, human slaves ARE still money-making machines, albeit less completely than during the days of slavery. Brothels are the most straightforward example -- in the country I live in (most of the time), prostitution itself is essentially legal; it may be illegal, but the enforcement is all of the regulatory type (stay-classy headline: "Officers Check Douches In Area Prostibulos.")
Despite this, human trafficking is a not-insignificant component of the prostitution industry there. Why?
The economy is getting better. A pretty young teenage girl has way, way more options than selling her body. So the only way to get and keep 'good talent' is, essentially, slavery that starts really young.
Now, in that context, it's clear that the retail price is an important part of the equation. If one of the ways you make money is the sex tourism industry (either globally or regionally), clearly you've figured out how to scale either the movement of your humans or the business of attracting customers to you, and the price of the humans is an important data point; the fact that it's so low, given how much harder smuggling people is than cocaine, is a disheartening problem for those considering where to target disincentives.
it's coming across as deceptive (even though the intentions may be good)
Like being asked, over and over again (speaking engagements, book tours, countless one-off interviews like this one), to try and squeeze the impact of an important message through the needle-eye of interview questions of variable quality.
Well, to put my thoughts into more clear terms, I felt that presenting the one figure while 'withholding' the others is what made me feel like it was being presented for shock-value.
> Now, in that context, it's clear that the retail price is an important part of the equation. If one of the ways you make money is the sex tourism industry (either globally or regionally), clearly you've figured out how to scale either the movement of your humans or the business of attracting customers to you, and the price of the humans is an important data point; the fact that it's so low, given how much harder smuggling people is than cocaine, is a disheartening problem for those considering where to target disincentives.
1. Don't immediately think that because there is a steady stream of women into brothels as slaves means that they are necessarily being imported. Trafficking in humans is relatively easy (so far as transportation goes), until you have to cross a border/checkpoint.
2. In the context of his Haiti example, he's being slightly deceptive by only quoting the retail price and forgetting to include the hidden fees. Even if he just flew down to Haiti to buy a slave, abuse him/her for a few days and then fly back to New York, the cost of the flights and accomodations are not being quoted there. Sure, if he was a Haitian, he wouldn't have those costs, but how many Haitians have $50 USD to buy a slave? It might make sense if Haiti has a sex-tourism industry, but I've never heard of it. (Of course, I'm not exactly on the 'pulse' of the sex-tourism industry or anything)
> I think that it may be feel that way, but as the facts seem to be solidly behind (essentially) everything he's saying, I'd ascribe that more to the artificiality that comes from other sources.
Like being asked, over and over again (speaking engagements, book tours, countless one-off interviews like this one), to try and squeeze the impact of an important message through the needle-eye of interview questions of variable quality.
If that is the case, I feel he should work harder on his delivery of the message. I know that it might look like I'm tearing him a new one in my comments, but I do feel that his cause is a noble one. I feel that he does have valueable experience, information, anecdotes to bring to the table. I just think that he needs to refine his delivery of the message and his call for action. I could just be getting too picky/OCD over this though.
How about some specifics?
For example, what military action is acceptable and when?
Is there a conflict between this and the belief that one can't "impose democracy" from outside? (Obama, among others, says that he believes that.)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/International_War_Crimes/C...
The blurbs often benefit their utters more than the books they're affixed to: looking at the list of people and institutions who gave feedback on the book, I can say a good chunk of them are karma-whoring themselves on the author's good standing.
This is a useful argument...
I simply mentioned him to show that this book is endorsed by the establishment as being reliable, which I thought was important because alternet is a leftist site with a specific political bias.
The who's who of fascist warmongers.
My first thought was, "Wow." My second thought was, "I wonder how many people end up in similar (very loose sense of the word) situations based on lending that's occurred in the last 5 years.
Or are you talking about credit card debt in the first world? In the US, the only consequence for failing to pay your debts [1] is an inability to get further credit.
[1] Child support debt excluded. You go to jail if you can't pay that.
ps - donations to credible organizations do help.
pps - somewhat relevant fiction making the rounds these days by Stieg Larsson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stieg_Larsson I really respect Larsson's response to things he felt were immoral. he set out to change them. 1+ investigative journalism.
That's two more "freely"s than the people we're talking about get, and I think it rather takes it out of the same domain altogether. In some sense I am a "wage slave" working for the man, but I freely chose it, and even suggesting that this is anything like actual slavery is unproductive at best (and probably offensive).
I know hatin' on the capitalist system is fun and all, but it's been a while in the places where the bad lending occurred where it is actual slavery.
Ah Google found it on the first query 'dubai slavery salty water':
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-har...
I don't doubt his number, 27 million, for a certain cutoff point of who is considered a slave and who isn't. If you move the cutoff around, though, you can truthfully say there are billions of slaves, or maybe even zero.
TM: I don't know ... $7,500?
BS: They asked for $100, and I talked them down to $50."
This fails the smell test for me. at $1 per day for food & shelter, he can buy her for less than it would cost them to keep her for 2 months.
Most likely, he was being scammed in some way. They were probably planning to rob him and had no intention of selling the girl.
Total, clearly.
>slaves are those forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence, for no pay beyond subsistence
>TM: To go back to the definition: Forced to work against their will with no escape.
>BS: Held through fraud under threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence.
Modern slavery is an important issue (for humans in general, leaving aside its relevance to HN). When the word is misused, the issue may be trivialized, and I think it would work against solving the slavery problem.
Modern slavery is an important problem, it should not be trivialized. Trivialized is not the right word; I am looking for an English word... when one misapplies a word and thus presents the situation direr than it is, diluting the meaning of the word. Like what happens with the word "Nazi" in modern American English usage (soup nazi etc). However nazis are almost gone and slavery is not. And rigging the numbers does not help.
Citation needed? I wouldn't be surprised to learn that, under his definition, there are more "slaves" than ever before (just given the increasing size of population).
On the other hand, I agree with you that we need to be careful with the vocabulary. While I'm not trying to downplay how serious the problem is is, I'm not sure if this definition of slavery will inspire the same sense of outrage the "traditional" one will in most people.
I'm not convinced that there are indeed 27 million people fitting that definition at the moment, but I can't see how someone fitting that description is anything other than a slave. (Hmm, though I suppose legitimate prisoners can be forced to do work without being "slaves" so perhaps the definition does require tinkering around the edges.)
Slaves != Wage SlavesIf you're in the Silicon Valley a group showed the movie at the Red Rock Coffeehouse in Mountain View on September 19, 2009. I'm not sure when the next showing is ... if you're interested contact the Red Rock or more likely the Highway Community (http://www.highway.org).