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Comment by josu | Hacker News Reader

The definition of slavery according to them:

Modern slavery involves one person possessing or controlling a person in such as a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal.

I would like to know what significantly means. Were African slaves in America "significantly deprived" or just "deprived".

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Significant to me would include:

- inability to change employers

- inability to travel off site

- inability to make more money than the employer charges for fees/housing/...

- inability to quit

- fear of harm from employer

Similar to the workers in Abu Dhabi

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/22/abu-dhabi-migra...

You should qualify 'inability'. I would have thought that 'inability to change employers'. applies to millions of people particularly older ones where if they are sacked the chance of getting another job may be non-existent.

A somewhat more controversial 'inability' would be a visa where you must leave the country within 72 hours of your job terminating, although its impossible to sell your house in 72 hours and close the transaction without any preparation and the typical workplace hiring cycle is perhaps two months long. So technically you could quit or get fired and stay in country, if you had preexisting arrangements, but in practice...

This would be an interesting, strange, startup idea for a jobs website. I'll work for you part time, for 1/10th pay or minimum wage whichever is higher, although I donno when, and only until I get a real job. I suppose this is basically the temp industry, in a nutshell, unless a startup could do it much better, somehow.

"inability to make more money than the employer charges for fees/housing/..."

You could argue that America has this as a de facto result of real estate speculation. In any given region, real estate has a tendency to inflate until it sops up all excess earnings. Getting "above" real estate is only possible if you can save up a large down payment, etc., and get ahead of it... essentially like how old Roman slaves could purchase their freedom if they could save enough.

The announcement of feudalism's demise was premature.

I think your question is fair and don't understand why you were downvoted.

I also question their definition of slavery. Are US prison inmates forced into labor also slaves?

Slavery is not an easy thing to define.

> Slavery is not an easy thing to define.

People also do a good job of rationalizing slavery into something else. The Swiss verdingkinder (child contracting) program existed until into the 1970's and some people still don't believe it was child slavery: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/opinion/slaverys-shadow-on...

It appears that inmates in modern US prisons are forced to work, though they are often incentivized to do work.[1]

Your question is still a good one though, and I would be interested to know whether penal labor would qualify as 'slavery', and whether the conditions of the facility, or the reason for incarceration would be taken into account in this judgement.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#United_States

Something I don't understand about FPI is my sister in law's public school is FULL of FPI stuff although technically they can only sell to the feds. I believe there's a lot of "pass thru" and "non-surplus surplus sales" going on in the prison industrial complex. I suspect there's a lot of "Well, sorry about no federal funds cash this quarter, budget crunch and all that, but here's some nice FPI desks made by prison slave labor". The quality level of the carpentry work, both labor and materials, is usually pretty high compared to Chinese slave labor which always kinda surprises me. I wonder if folks closer to public schools than I am, see as much FPI as I do.

Agreed, what about communities where marriage is extremely strict or are arranged? -they essentially cannot leave -they must work or can be beaten -they cannot go out alone -money is often exchanged in the marriage process This meets all the listed criteria for slavery. No black and white (pun not intended, but it works) definition that can be used, so any quantification is subjective. On the subject of prison labor, just after the civil war many southern states used trumped up charges to essentially enslave the newly "free."

African slaves count as slaves under this definition.

I'm not sure why you brought that up - that's not controversial.

They include significant to cover cases of bonded labour or trafficked workers. In theory a woman traffiked from one country to another and forced to work as a prostitute is free to go the that country's police forces to report the crime but we know that they don't actually have that freedom.

See also people who are transported to another country and have heir passports taken from them.

Here's a gruesome article about bonded labour in India.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27486450

Were African slaves in America "significantly deprived" or just "deprived".

Taken away from their homelands by force to a different continent, using a technology that they couldn't replicate to get back? Forced to work in specific locations, and if they ran away, they were hunted down and brought back? Sold as objects for labour?

Is this a serious question? How much more 'significant' does it need to be before it reaches your theoretical bar? What's the gray area that you see that means they might not be defined as slaves?

Oh, no, I guess I didn’t express myself properly. It is obvious that they were slaves. I was asking if the significant would actually be necessary in that case. And if it wouldn't be, what is significant implying in this definition? Does current slavery allow for more personal liberties that old fashion slavery.

http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/terminology/

Just in case people are wondering where you got that from.

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