6 ms·

Estimate how many slaves work for you based on your possessions and lifestyle.

69 points by SandB0x 15y ago

sgt 15y ago
Apparently I have 60 slaves working for me. Anyone beat my "high score"?
- tintin 15y ago
  Well the interface is very bad so I gave up after 8/11...
  - colanderman 15y ago
    Ya I couldn't get it to go past 8/11. It kept trying to load something in a sidebar and wouldn't allow me to click past it.
  - artmageddon 15y ago
    I have 34. I agree that it can use a lot of work. Some of the numbers didn't make sense. I don't get how I'm supposed to rank my shrimp consumption, for instance, on a scale of 0 to infinity...?
    - ktsmith 15y ago
      Some of the side bars give guidance and some don't. The food one says at the top rank them from 0-5 with 0 being never consume and 5 consume constantly or something like that. The bigger problem is on that sidebar you can go past 5. On the other side bars there's no guidance and the counters go up so what does the number even mean. Apparently I contribute to lots of slavery (60) because I have lots of ball point pens and electronics.... doesn't make a ton of sense.
  - sgt 15y ago
    Interesting, I nearly gave up around that point. I think they tried to make the user experience a good one, but in the end it just looked confusing, and had my eyes scanning several times to try to figure out what was going on.
cbr 15y ago
They describe their calculations: http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology They appear to count "N slaves working for you" if they predict N slaves were involved in the production of anything you have, not the number you keep continuously employed.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  This methodology is questionable. Suppose 10 slaves work on an assembly line for a year and produce 100,000 soccer balls used by 100,000 people. In that case, these 100,000 people each have 10 slaves working for them. On the other hand, suppose you had 100 slaves handcrafting 100,000 soccer balls. In that case, each of these 100,000 people has only 1 slave working for them. This methodology seems to penalize inefficient manufacturing processes less than more efficient ones, even if the more efficient ones result in less slavery.
- TDL 15y ago
  Another flaw in the methodology is that if I own no slaves, I have no slaves working for me.
marvin 15y ago
A lot of the moral judgements made on the linked site about a materialistic lifestyle don't really have anything to do with the fact that people in the west are evil, but rather that the culture in certain parts of the world where manufacturing takes place is conductive to exploitation. For instance, if I buy a diamond ring, I am not responsible for lives taken with weapons that have been bought with diamonds. If I drink Coca-Cola, I am not responsible for some obscure branch of the Coca-Cola Company which seizes the drinking water source of an entire village. If I pay for sex in Norway, that doesn't mean I am responsible for children being forced to sell their bodies in sex trafficing. Except in a few narrow cases where law enforcement gets involved, I never even see these children. In each of these instances, there are real wrongs commited - but the wrongs are perpetrated by people who are a lot more unscrupulous than me. It is a fallacy to claim that the end user of products of industries where bad things sometimes happen, does something wrong. Everyone has a moral responsibility, but this responsibility doesn't carry over all the way. Does anyone really think that the Indian microfinance debt collectors who force children into prostitution will suddenly become upstanding citizens if "microfinance" companies are banned? These problems need to be addressed at the source. Moral judgements like the ones implied in this app are a huge fallacy. Things will not get better if demand for strictly unnecessary goods and services suddenly disappears.
- artmageddon 15y ago
  >A lot of the moral judgements made on the linked site about a materialistic lifestyle don't really have anything to do with the fact that people in the west are evil, but rather that the culture in certain parts of the world where manufacturing takes place is conductive to exploitation. I think it's probably fair to say that most people on HN are aware that these kinds of problems exist(thus I agree with all points); but I certainly know many people who couldn't imagine that opening a bottle of happiness means that someone in a far away village is suffering for it. It's true that these problems need to be handled at the source, likewise that consumers changing their habits won't be enough to enact change because the criminals who perpetrate these crimes will simply change tactics. While I said in another comment that the site could use lots of work, I think it's great in terms of shedding light on the topic of human slavery / trafficking to those who are simply unaware. The one drawback is that it can potentially induce guilt among those same people, and it's difficult to get people to change their minds about something they simply aren't exposed to all that often.
dwhitney 15y ago
32 Slaves. Now what?
- jsnk 15y ago
  Learn to exploit. I have 94 slaves.
johng 15y ago
My score is 76.
rokhayakebe 15y ago
If we are buying products which were made, or have parts that were made, by people in terrible conditions, what would happen if we stopped buying those? Does it mean the people who use to make $1/day are now making $0/day which will lead to a harder life filled with crimes? Note: This is an honest question. I also come from a place where skilled-workers make around $4 or $5/day. I think in many cases, $4/day is better than 0.
- yelsgib 15y ago
  The people who make $1/day stop making $1/day. There is crisis. The crisis is caused by the cessation of a domination-based dependence relationship. The crisis could cause government collapse and mass-death. Out of the ashes will arise a (necessarily) more self-sufficient community. The fact is that globalization fixes countries as "slave countries." It's very easy to control people by giving them a locally beneficial option. Which sounds better to you: Make $1/day working 16 hours per day - spend the rest of your time sleeping/taking care of yourself/family. Making $0/day refusing to work - spend your day working on building up your community in creative ways, but suffer much higher probability of personal/family death. The option that 99.9% of people will take is #1. However, real change can't occur if everyone takes #1, so we have stasis.
  - TDL 15y ago
    A necessary condition for this scenario is that these people are being compelled to work for a $1/day. If the options that exists are $1/day vs. privation vs. criminality vs. selling sex services, most people would choose a $1/day.
  - DuncanIdaho 15y ago
    That worked really well for Somalia, innit? I mean, look at all the creative endeavours the good people of Somalia ventured upon release from the hands of the Evil Government and Lobbies. You are a perfect example of a person that would pave his road to hell with good intentions. All due to failure to see humans as we really are, and our time and again honoured tradition of refusing to do what "should" be done.
RockyMcNuts 15y ago
Crappy job <> slave. Yeah, anything nice we have or use is thanks to people with crappy jobs... but there are people lining up out the door for those jobs, as they offer a better life than subsistence farming or scavenging garbage and living in a favela. And the places where those jobs don't exist are even worse off. Not to excuse the creation of inhuman living and working conditions. But better to work for appropriate conditions, than broad-brush everyone a slaveowner.
- DanBC 15y ago
  Debt Bondage is real. People are not lining up out the door to replace people in debt-bondage slavery. (http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/inde...)
  - RockyMcNuts 15y ago
    fair enough. I don't want to minimize the issue, but there is room for some realistic perspective, somewhere between indifference and equating consumers with slaveowners. The link says there are at least 12.3m forced laborers. If every American had 10 'slaves' that would be 3.1b slaves. This was a pretty eye-opening story about an unfortunate Chinese deliveryman a few months ago http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22victim.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22victim.html?pag...
Dove 15y ago
I was curious what they recommended behind the "take action" tab, but it required a signup. Here's what's on the other sign of the registerwall: Make Progress. Get the App. You earn Free World points for spreading the news and encouraging brands to audit their supply chains. Down the app and use it for check-ins, sending pre-written notes to companies, and sharing your progress with your community. You can also earn Free World points right here. To get Free World points: - Easily send notes to companies, asking them to examine their supply chains. - Make a donation to support the fight against slavery in the supply chain. - Raise awareness about slavery by sharing this survey, your footprint, and your progress. - Download and use the mobile app to check in while shopping to share your concerns about the use of slavery in the products you buy. - Use the Made In A Free World mobile app for more opportunities to earn Free World points. So . . . it's a game. I must admit, I find that a bit cold. Compare the approach to something like http://mercyhousecoffee.org http://mercyhousecoffee.org
zeteo 15y ago
Let's have a closer look at the "complex algorithm that determines the minimum number of slaves [...] used to produce each product" [1]. The basic data is supposedly taken from five official reports, but only one of these (the one they call "DOL" [2]) has anything direct to do with production of goods by forced labor. Examining this report, it provides nothing more than a list of countries and goods for which forced labor plays a "significant" part, where significant is defined as anything but "an isolated incident of child labor or forced labor" ([2] p.7). There is no quantitative data in this list, which means that, for instance, if you own a T-shirt made of Argentinian cotton, there's no telling whether the probability this cotton was handled by a child laborer is 90% or 0.1%. Thus it is impossible to estimate any number of "slaves" from such data, and the methodology is complete and utter BS. [1] http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology [2] http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/pdf/2010TVPRA.pdf http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/pdf/2010TVPRA.pdf
vijayr 15y ago
very interesting interface, even though it is slow and sluggish at times.
Omnipresent 15y ago
Really neat interface but this is prime example of going overboard with UI. I'm sure more people would actually finish step 11 if everything was within one or two pages with fewer clicks. On a side note, I have 42 slaves!
zwieback 15y ago
Very cool website and a good message. Main takeaway for me: either "everyone" is a liar or only saintly people took the survey.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  I'm slightly below average without lying - this may be a problem with demographics. I'm a bachelor with scarcely anything beyond the basics in the bathrooms, and a very limited wardrobe. Almost all of my slave score comes from electronics. This would change dramatically if you're calculating for multiple people in a household, or you're just not a barebones bachelor like me.
marcf 15y ago
The questions really profile you pretty deeply -- City, Gender, Age, Children, consumer preferences. Is that the point of the website?
tamersalama 15y ago
Great design; Does anyone know if that was from scratch, or if there's a visual/back-end framework behind it?
- darraghenright 15y ago
  looks like they're using backbone.js as a framework. also, raphaël which I haven't heard of before; it's a vector graphics library apparently. so, I think the answer to your questions are yes, and yes :) very nice work from them btw.
jay_kyburz 15y ago
When I clicked on this link I thought it was going to be about the wage slaves that work for me down at the local mall. Day in and day out they shuffle into their meaningless jobs, selling shoes or flipping burgers. 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 40 years. They rack up a life time of debt in the first few years of adulthood and struggle to stay on top of it for the rest of their lives. I'd much rather live within my means and enjoy life instead. I want to build interesting stuff, fun games, follow my dreams...
JoachimSchipper 15y ago
There are real methodological issues here. Even so, I'd prefer reducing the number of people forced into slavery. Does anyone have suggestions on how to do this most efficiently? Some numbers: - consume less: my consumption seems to require about one "slave" (in the site's sense) per EUR 1000/USD 1500. (Being a fairly frugal vegetarian may help here. Or not.) - Fair Trade: http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ suggests that 100g of cocoa (say one good bar of chocolate) requires about one child-slave-day; - no diamonds: this is surprisingly hard to pin down. Searching the internet suggests that the cost in lives lost in wars is much greater than the cost in lives lost in slavery.
kwamenum86 15y ago
Comes off as a marketing trojan horse...
kwamenum86 15y ago
Comes off as a marketing trojan horse...
maeon3 15y ago
The site wont load on an Android browser. Take off the "if statement" that says dont run on small screens.
peterwwillis 15y ago
Where are these supposed sex slaves of mine and why haven't I met them for their annual performance review?
S_A_P 15y ago
Maybe I am oversimplifying here, but I'm sure that a detailed audit of most companies could find behavior that some group would find unconscionable. I think that one could literally end up exhausting themselves by finding and actively avoiding these companies. I also think that if someone has no qualms breaking the law/exploiting people to make money, that cutting off one revenue stream would not stop the behavior of that person, they would move along to the next scam.
catherinej 15y ago
The survey app takes an interesting approach to raising people's awareness of slave-labor conditions, but it doesn't make sense (or only makes sense for a particular demographic) to base calculations on how many items of a particular kind the survey-taker currently owns. It matters just as much how often the items are replaced (once a year? once every 20 years? once in a lifetime?) and whether they're acquired new or used. In a materially rich society it's possible to buy almost all goods except food, medicine, and energy in the second-hand market. And, with a few tools, the life of many consumer goods can be greatly prolonged. Some of the most politically and socially conscious (and most slave-labor averse) people I know are low-income old people who remember the Great Depression, live with packed closets, and spend their days repairing hand-me-downs and broken machines. They aren't, obviously, the target market of the slaveryfootprint app, but some of their consumption strategies might mentioned in future versions. There might be future questions along the lines of, "How many broken computers have your repaired in the past five years?" Or, "How many worn and outmoded garments have you mended and re-sewn into something more stylish?"
thyrsus 15y ago
I know, completely irrelevant, but coltran is not a supercondctor.
fbomb 15y ago
After taking the test (69 slaves), I thought I would try to see if I could minimize & maximize the results. So as a 1-year old naked infant in Bangalore with absolutely nothing to her name, I had 14 slaves. As a 40-year old homeowner in NYC with 16 children, a large house and tons of stuff, I had 151 slaves.

69 points by SandB0x 15y ago

sgt 15y ago

Apparently I have 60 slaves working for me. Anyone beat my "high score"?

tintin 15y ago
Well the interface is very bad so I gave up after 8/11...
- colanderman 15y ago
  Ya I couldn't get it to go past 8/11. It kept trying to load something in a sidebar and wouldn't allow me to click past it.
- artmageddon 15y ago
  I have 34. I agree that it can use a lot of work. Some of the numbers didn't make sense. I don't get how I'm supposed to rank my shrimp consumption, for instance, on a scale of 0 to infinity...?
  - ktsmith 15y ago
    Some of the side bars give guidance and some don't. The food one says at the top rank them from 0-5 with 0 being never consume and 5 consume constantly or something like that. The bigger problem is on that sidebar you can go past 5. On the other side bars there's no guidance and the counters go up so what does the number even mean. Apparently I contribute to lots of slavery (60) because I have lots of ball point pens and electronics.... doesn't make a ton of sense.
- sgt 15y ago
  Interesting, I nearly gave up around that point. I think they tried to make the user experience a good one, but in the end it just looked confusing, and had my eyes scanning several times to try to figure out what was going on.

cbr 15y ago

They describe their calculations: http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology They appear to count "N slaves working for you" if they predict N slaves were involved in the production of anything you have, not the number you keep continuously employed.

yummyfajitas 15y ago
This methodology is questionable. Suppose 10 slaves work on an assembly line for a year and produce 100,000 soccer balls used by 100,000 people. In that case, these 100,000 people each have 10 slaves working for them. On the other hand, suppose you had 100 slaves handcrafting 100,000 soccer balls. In that case, each of these 100,000 people has only 1 slave working for them. This methodology seems to penalize inefficient manufacturing processes less than more efficient ones, even if the more efficient ones result in less slavery.
TDL 15y ago
Another flaw in the methodology is that if I own no slaves, I have no slaves working for me.

marvin 15y ago

A lot of the moral judgements made on the linked site about a materialistic lifestyle don't really have anything to do with the fact that people in the west are evil, but rather that the culture in certain parts of the world where manufacturing takes place is conductive to exploitation. For instance, if I buy a diamond ring, I am not responsible for lives taken with weapons that have been bought with diamonds. If I drink Coca-Cola, I am not responsible for some obscure branch of the Coca-Cola Company which seizes the drinking water source of an entire village. If I pay for sex in Norway, that doesn't mean I am responsible for children being forced to sell their bodies in sex trafficing. Except in a few narrow cases where law enforcement gets involved, I never even see these children. In each of these instances, there are real wrongs commited - but the wrongs are perpetrated by people who are a lot more unscrupulous than me. It is a fallacy to claim that the end user of products of industries where bad things sometimes happen, does something wrong. Everyone has a moral responsibility, but this responsibility doesn't carry over all the way. Does anyone really think that the Indian microfinance debt collectors who force children into prostitution will suddenly become upstanding citizens if "microfinance" companies are banned? These problems need to be addressed at the source. Moral judgements like the ones implied in this app are a huge fallacy. Things will not get better if demand for strictly unnecessary goods and services suddenly disappears.

artmageddon 15y ago
>A lot of the moral judgements made on the linked site about a materialistic lifestyle don't really have anything to do with the fact that people in the west are evil, but rather that the culture in certain parts of the world where manufacturing takes place is conductive to exploitation. I think it's probably fair to say that most people on HN are aware that these kinds of problems exist(thus I agree with all points); but I certainly know many people who couldn't imagine that opening a bottle of happiness means that someone in a far away village is suffering for it. It's true that these problems need to be handled at the source, likewise that consumers changing their habits won't be enough to enact change because the criminals who perpetrate these crimes will simply change tactics. While I said in another comment that the site could use lots of work, I think it's great in terms of shedding light on the topic of human slavery / trafficking to those who are simply unaware. The one drawback is that it can potentially induce guilt among those same people, and it's difficult to get people to change their minds about something they simply aren't exposed to all that often.

dwhitney 15y ago

32 Slaves. Now what?

jsnk 15y ago
Learn to exploit. I have 94 slaves.

johng 15y ago

My score is 76.

rokhayakebe 15y ago

If we are buying products which were made, or have parts that were made, by people in terrible conditions, what would happen if we stopped buying those? Does it mean the people who use to make $1/day are now making $0/day which will lead to a harder life filled with crimes? Note: This is an honest question. I also come from a place where skilled-workers make around $4 or $5/day. I think in many cases, $4/day is better than 0.

yelsgib 15y ago
The people who make $1/day stop making $1/day. There is crisis. The crisis is caused by the cessation of a domination-based dependence relationship. The crisis could cause government collapse and mass-death. Out of the ashes will arise a (necessarily) more self-sufficient community. The fact is that globalization fixes countries as "slave countries." It's very easy to control people by giving them a locally beneficial option. Which sounds better to you: Make $1/day working 16 hours per day - spend the rest of your time sleeping/taking care of yourself/family. Making $0/day refusing to work - spend your day working on building up your community in creative ways, but suffer much higher probability of personal/family death. The option that 99.9% of people will take is #1. However, real change can't occur if everyone takes #1, so we have stasis.
- TDL 15y ago
  A necessary condition for this scenario is that these people are being compelled to work for a $1/day. If the options that exists are $1/day vs. privation vs. criminality vs. selling sex services, most people would choose a $1/day.
- DuncanIdaho 15y ago
  That worked really well for Somalia, innit? I mean, look at all the creative endeavours the good people of Somalia ventured upon release from the hands of the Evil Government and Lobbies. You are a perfect example of a person that would pave his road to hell with good intentions. All due to failure to see humans as we really are, and our time and again honoured tradition of refusing to do what "should" be done.

RockyMcNuts 15y ago

Crappy job <> slave. Yeah, anything nice we have or use is thanks to people with crappy jobs... but there are people lining up out the door for those jobs, as they offer a better life than subsistence farming or scavenging garbage and living in a favela. And the places where those jobs don't exist are even worse off. Not to excuse the creation of inhuman living and working conditions. But better to work for appropriate conditions, than broad-brush everyone a slaveowner.

DanBC 15y ago
Debt Bondage is real. People are not lining up out the door to replace people in debt-bondage slavery. (http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang--en/inde...)
- RockyMcNuts 15y ago
  fair enough. I don't want to minimize the issue, but there is room for some realistic perspective, somewhere between indifference and equating consumers with slaveowners. The link says there are at least 12.3m forced laborers. If every American had 10 'slaves' that would be 3.1b slaves. This was a pretty eye-opening story about an unfortunate Chinese deliveryman a few months ago http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22victim.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22victim.html?pag...

Dove 15y ago

I was curious what they recommended behind the "take action" tab, but it required a signup. Here's what's on the other sign of the registerwall: Make Progress. Get the App. You earn Free World points for spreading the news and encouraging brands to audit their supply chains. Down the app and use it for check-ins, sending pre-written notes to companies, and sharing your progress with your community. You can also earn Free World points right here. To get Free World points: - Easily send notes to companies, asking them to examine their supply chains. - Make a donation to support the fight against slavery in the supply chain. - Raise awareness about slavery by sharing this survey, your footprint, and your progress. - Download and use the mobile app to check in while shopping to share your concerns about the use of slavery in the products you buy. - Use the Made In A Free World mobile app for more opportunities to earn Free World points. So . . . it's a game. I must admit, I find that a bit cold. Compare the approach to something like http://mercyhousecoffee.org http://mercyhousecoffee.org

zeteo 15y ago

Let's have a closer look at the "complex algorithm that determines the minimum number of slaves [...] used to produce each product" [1]. The basic data is supposedly taken from five official reports, but only one of these (the one they call "DOL" [2]) has anything direct to do with production of goods by forced labor. Examining this report, it provides nothing more than a list of countries and goods for which forced labor plays a "significant" part, where significant is defined as anything but "an isolated incident of child labor or forced labor" ([2] p.7). There is no quantitative data in this list, which means that, for instance, if you own a T-shirt made of Argentinian cotton, there's no telling whether the probability this cotton was handled by a child laborer is 90% or 0.1%. Thus it is impossible to estimate any number of "slaves" from such data, and the methodology is complete and utter BS. [1] http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#methodology [2] http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/pdf/2010TVPRA.pdf http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/pdf/2010TVPRA.pdf

vijayr 15y ago

very interesting interface, even though it is slow and sluggish at times.

Omnipresent 15y ago

Really neat interface but this is prime example of going overboard with UI. I'm sure more people would actually finish step 11 if everything was within one or two pages with fewer clicks. On a side note, I have 42 slaves!

zwieback 15y ago

Very cool website and a good message. Main takeaway for me: either "everyone" is a liar or only saintly people took the survey.

potatolicious 15y ago
I'm slightly below average without lying - this may be a problem with demographics. I'm a bachelor with scarcely anything beyond the basics in the bathrooms, and a very limited wardrobe. Almost all of my slave score comes from electronics. This would change dramatically if you're calculating for multiple people in a household, or you're just not a barebones bachelor like me.

marcf 15y ago

The questions really profile you pretty deeply -- City, Gender, Age, Children, consumer preferences. Is that the point of the website?

tamersalama 15y ago

Great design; Does anyone know if that was from scratch, or if there's a visual/back-end framework behind it?

darraghenright 15y ago
looks like they're using backbone.js as a framework. also, raphaël which I haven't heard of before; it's a vector graphics library apparently. so, I think the answer to your questions are yes, and yes :) very nice work from them btw.

jay_kyburz 15y ago

When I clicked on this link I thought it was going to be about the wage slaves that work for me down at the local mall. Day in and day out they shuffle into their meaningless jobs, selling shoes or flipping burgers. 8 hours a day 5 days a week for 40 years. They rack up a life time of debt in the first few years of adulthood and struggle to stay on top of it for the rest of their lives. I'd much rather live within my means and enjoy life instead. I want to build interesting stuff, fun games, follow my dreams...

JoachimSchipper 15y ago

There are real methodological issues here. Even so, I'd prefer reducing the number of people forced into slavery. Does anyone have suggestions on how to do this most efficiently? Some numbers: - consume less: my consumption seems to require about one "slave" (in the site's sense) per EUR 1000/USD 1500. (Being a fairly frugal vegetarian may help here. Or not.) - Fair Trade: http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ http://www.slavefreechocolate.org/ suggests that 100g of cocoa (say one good bar of chocolate) requires about one child-slave-day; - no diamonds: this is surprisingly hard to pin down. Searching the internet suggests that the cost in lives lost in wars is much greater than the cost in lives lost in slavery.

kwamenum86 15y ago

Comes off as a marketing trojan horse...

kwamenum86 15y ago

Comes off as a marketing trojan horse...

maeon3 15y ago

The site wont load on an Android browser. Take off the "if statement" that says dont run on small screens.

peterwwillis 15y ago

Where are these supposed sex slaves of mine and why haven't I met them for their annual performance review?

S_A_P 15y ago

Maybe I am oversimplifying here, but I'm sure that a detailed audit of most companies could find behavior that some group would find unconscionable. I think that one could literally end up exhausting themselves by finding and actively avoiding these companies. I also think that if someone has no qualms breaking the law/exploiting people to make money, that cutting off one revenue stream would not stop the behavior of that person, they would move along to the next scam.

catherinej 15y ago

The survey app takes an interesting approach to raising people's awareness of slave-labor conditions, but it doesn't make sense (or only makes sense for a particular demographic) to base calculations on how many items of a particular kind the survey-taker currently owns. It matters just as much how often the items are replaced (once a year? once every 20 years? once in a lifetime?) and whether they're acquired new or used. In a materially rich society it's possible to buy almost all goods except food, medicine, and energy in the second-hand market. And, with a few tools, the life of many consumer goods can be greatly prolonged. Some of the most politically and socially conscious (and most slave-labor averse) people I know are low-income old people who remember the Great Depression, live with packed closets, and spend their days repairing hand-me-downs and broken machines. They aren't, obviously, the target market of the slaveryfootprint app, but some of their consumption strategies might mentioned in future versions. There might be future questions along the lines of, "How many broken computers have your repaired in the past five years?" Or, "How many worn and outmoded garments have you mended and re-sewn into something more stylish?"

thyrsus 15y ago

I know, completely irrelevant, but coltran is not a supercondctor.

fbomb 15y ago

After taking the test (69 slaves), I thought I would try to see if I could minimize & maximize the results. So as a 1-year old naked infant in Bangalore with absolutely nothing to her name, I had 14 slaves. As a 40-year old homeowner in NYC with 16 children, a large house and tons of stuff, I had 151 slaves.