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Comment by cema | Hacker News Reader

In other words, different definitions from what was used in the past. Need a common definition for a meaningful comparison.

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I'm confused -- what was the old definition of "slave" which was so different from "person forced to work and prevented by force from leaving"?

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.)

The "held through fraud" part maybe what distinguishes legitimate prisoners from slaves. Although, that part of the definition does seem strange, I'm not sure if we'd always want to require that someone be held through fraud to be considered a slave (someone chained to a post and forced to do hard labor is still a slave in my book, but I don't see any fraud involved).

"I'm not convinced that there are indeed 27 million people.." There are billions of people in the world. Billions. Think about that for a minute and let it sink in.

The comparison isn't important, it's a title meant to draw attention. Bikeshed, etc.

Yes, the title is unfortunate, in part because it is incorrect. To see that it is incorrect, one needs to define the slave consistently.

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.

Presumably when he is doing his comparison he is using a common definition.

Then he is incorrect.

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.

Then he is incorrect.

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.

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