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> With an important caveat: it’s almost completely eradicated _for now_. That's not even close to true. There are ~30 million slaves worldwide today [1]. I can
by creato 8y ago
> With an important caveat: it’s almost completely eradicated _for now_.
That's not even close to true. There are ~30 million slaves worldwide today [1]. I can't find a concise worldwide total for around the time most people imagine is the peak of slavery, at least in the US (1860?), but that was "only" less than 4 million [2].
Whatever point was being made about slavery as an example in this conversation IMO points exactly the opposite way the GP intended: that slavery is a "natural" state for humans to end up in, and it requires continuous effort to prevent it. Just like war.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St...
2. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1860.html https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1860.html
- dnautics 8y agoAre you normalizing to the total human population? So currently 30 million slaves out of a 7 billion population is under a half a percent, compared to 4 million slaves in the us out of a US population of 30 million is almost 7 percent. I'd say that's an improvement
- creato 8y agoIt seems that ~60 million people are affected by war [1], "only" ~2x as many. So I think that the original point I was making stands: neither slavery nor war are things that humans "grew out of". They both need significant, active effort by people to avoid/contain/resist. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jun/18/59m-people-displaced-war-violence-persecution-says-un https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jun/18/5...