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These have been big news in SE Asia recently and with reason: there are credible reports of kidnapped people being tortured to death. In desperately poor Cambo

These have been big news in SE Asia recently and with reason: there are credible reports of kidnapped people being tortured to death. In desperately poor Cambodia and Laos, the regional police are on the syndicates' payroll, and in the lawless border regions of Myanmar the central government has no sway whatsoever. A corollary to this are the infamous fish processing boats of Thailand, where illegal immigrants (mostly from Myanmar) are held as slaves and simply pushed into the sea once they outlive their usefulness. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jul/20/thai-fishing-industry-implicated-enslavement-deaths-rohingya https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jul/20/t...

luckylion 4y ago
Hard to imagine it happening at that scale in the West. Is it just wealth that keeps most people here from becoming slavers and murderers? Is it the fear of the law coming down on them? Cultural norms? How "accepted" is that trade in the wider community, do the owners of these scams (or the Thai fishermen) get respected, or do they live in constant fear that someone takes justice in their own hands and ends them?
- qubex 4y ago
  You’d be surprised. I’ve chanced upon operations of this kind in Malta, Bulgaria, and Israel.
  - AlmostAnyone 4y ago
    Just today there was an article about police operation in UK with Czech people being slaved for sex work.
  - roey2009 4y ago
    As an Israeli former soldier, could you elaborate? I remember our commanders telling us that there used to be a trafficking route through the border of Egypt, but it stopped when the border patrol improved, couple years back. They were smuggling Eastern European girls to prostitute. Did something change to your knowledge? Or are you talking about another route?
- rippercushions 4y ago
  It's the same basic model as any criminal enterprise: people who value money above all else self-select into these roles, and the owners insulate themselves from the guy wielding the cattle prod with layers of underlings. See also drug cartels, extortion rackets, etc.
  - lupire 4y ago
    And the leaders are supported by huge throngs of people who need or want money and are willing to ignore their role (wittingly or unwittingly) or are blackmailed into compliance.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  A) The west just has fewer people. The most populous country in Europe - Germany - would be only the 10th most populous country in Asia. B) A substantial amount of people in Asia live in rural areas. In India, nearly 920M people live in rural areas. The lack of infrastructure in rural areas means that things can happen that never ever reach the local authorities. People can simply slip away without a trace. C) State power is weak outside of major population centers. Corruption is rife. Povery is rampant. Earning opportunities are limited. Combined, it means that criminals know they can get away with anything as long as they bribe the right people. D) A substantial percentage of Asian population lives under failed states (same for Africa). State power isn't just weak; it's absent. E) Asia is just way too large and geographically diverse. Easy to hide away illicit activity in a dense rainforest or deserted mountain than in wide open plains and farmland.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Thank you, very good points. Combining those factors probably makes for a perfect storm.
  - lupire 4y ago
    "State power is weak" is a weird claim since the powerful states don't prevent trade with slavers. Powerful states like US and China run slavery operations directly. It's even explicitly enshrined in the US Constitution.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      The US didn't become a powerful state until the Constitution was amended to ban slavery. The Confederacy, for example, was militarily and economically a very weak state. It couldn't even supply shoes to its soldiers. It was unable to pierce the blockade on them by the Union. And so on.
    - prottog 4y ago
      It's a far stretch to say that allowing slavery or involuntary servitude as a penalty for duly convicted criminal is somehow "enshrining" it.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Human trafficking is a real issue in the West. Restaurant workers and prostitutes may not end up outright killed, but the conditions can be close to slavery.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Is it a real issue? I hear it constantly from the right but I'd like to see some numbers
    - llamaimperative 4y ago
      > In 2020, 10,583 situations of human trafficking were reported to the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline involving 16,658 individual victims. Shocking as these numbers are, they are likely only a fraction of the actual problem. https://polarisproject.org/2020-us-national-human-trafficking-hotline-statistics/ https://polarisproject.org/2020-us-national-human-traffickin... To be clear though, what you’re hearing (or at least what I’m hearing) from the US right wing is not referring to this. It’s referring to a theory that specifically cultural elites are specifically trafficking children for sex. There’s no reason to believe this is a large issue, though obviously there were systemic failures in the whole Epstein ordeal that gave conspiracists a lot of ammunition. The majority of trafficking is of laborers, which the right wing generally opposes protections of, and immigrants, which again the right wing generally opposes easy paths to legal citizenship and legal protection for illegal immigrants wherever possible (leading victims to believe they cannot contact law enforcement). Having grown up in a US border state I strongly suspect labor trafficking is dramatically underreported because a lot of immigrant laborers don’t even know they’re being trafficked. They’re essentially told they have no rights in the US and that’s just how it is. The reality of course is that you have ~100% of the legal protection offered to citizens the moment you set foot on US soil. All of this applies equally to another large source of trafficking which is sex work. US right wing is fixated on the morality of sex work rather than the morality of building a system that rewards and enables coerced sex work.
      - xfitm3 4y ago
        As someone who had inside knowledge of the sex work industry the incident rate of trafficking was extremely low. Most trafficking was related to Asian gangs in LA, SF, NY. It's an anecdote, take it with a grain of salt.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Hard to imagine it happening at that scale in the West. I think this idea is quite dangerous and reeks of superiority. It has happened before and it could happen again. Sister comment made a point about forced prostitution and human traficcing being common. I want to make a point that to get rid of this as a matter of policy, we've had revolutions and guillotines. To enforce this, we have well armed, strong goverments with long reach. The fact that this keeps happening in every area without a strong government -from failed states to international waters - undercuts libertarian argument quite a bit. Youd think they would move to somalia en masse and turn it into the promosed land
  - logicchains 4y ago
    >The fact that this keeps happening in every area without a strong government -from failed states to international waters - undercuts libertarian argument quite a bit Myanmar is a hardcore communist military dictatorship, I'd hardly call that a weak government.
    - muststopmyths 4y ago
      Communist ? The communist party of Burma (CPB) would be surprised to learn that
    - lupire 4y ago
      Evil doesn't imply strong.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    > It has happened before and it could happen again. Sure, I wasn't implying that it couldn't happen here, I'm just clumsy with words. I was trying to say it's hard to imagine it happening at similar scale _right now_, i.e. Danish fishing vessels buying slaves and throwing them overboard when they're too weak to continue working, in 2022. I'm aware of trafficking, forced prostitution and indentured servitude with work in nail salons etc, but as far as I understand, the scale is (currently) very different, and it's much less extreme (assuming there are no secret mass graves we'll find in the future).
  - 4y ago
- lupire 4y ago
  Slavery is caused by one thing: imbalance of power between people. Whenever one entity or group gets too much power, slavery follows.
- duxup 4y ago
  Effective institutions, independent judiciary helps a great deal.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Reports like these make me so jaded and cynical about technology and all the supposed ills it cures. So much money goes into solving non-problems like 15-minute delivery or cryptocurrencies when such a huge swathe of the world still struggles with energy, security, and access to basic dignity.
- barterr 4y ago
  I’d say that’s more of a capitalism problem than a technology problem
  - soggylaundry 4y ago
    well if you look at world history, it always has been like this -- look at all those proudly-written enslavements, crimes and massacres. But we're starting to grow out of it, and tech is helping us track down crimes that were near-impossible to track down.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      Very often tech is enabling these crimes. Monitoring and punishment of millions of people was much more difficult before.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        And exposure and transparency was much more difficult before too. A tool is a tool, how it is used is the important part.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        The Soviet Union had no trouble at all monitoring and punishing tens of millions of people. It also operated forced labor camps (gulags) on a vast scale.
  - reitanqild 4y ago
    Actually, on average the rich countries that has diverged most from capitalism has been significantly worse. I'm leaving out the developing countries on purpose here: they may have had it even worse but it doesn't feel fair to blame them. Nazi Germany and Soviet/USSR (the whole time more or less) can't blame anyone else for the insane scale of human suffering that they created. Both are representatives of centrally planned economies where companies either don't exist in a western sense (Soviet), or only exist to serve the country (Germany).

luckylion 4y ago

Hard to imagine it happening at that scale in the West. Is it just wealth that keeps most people here from becoming slavers and murderers? Is it the fear of the law coming down on them? Cultural norms? How "accepted" is that trade in the wider community, do the owners of these scams (or the Thai fishermen) get respected, or do they live in constant fear that someone takes justice in their own hands and ends them?

qubex 4y ago
You’d be surprised. I’ve chanced upon operations of this kind in Malta, Bulgaria, and Israel.
- AlmostAnyone 4y ago
  Just today there was an article about police operation in UK with Czech people being slaved for sex work.
- roey2009 4y ago
  As an Israeli former soldier, could you elaborate? I remember our commanders telling us that there used to be a trafficking route through the border of Egypt, but it stopped when the border patrol improved, couple years back. They were smuggling Eastern European girls to prostitute. Did something change to your knowledge? Or are you talking about another route?
rippercushions 4y ago
It's the same basic model as any criminal enterprise: people who value money above all else self-select into these roles, and the owners insulate themselves from the guy wielding the cattle prod with layers of underlings. See also drug cartels, extortion rackets, etc.
- lupire 4y ago
  And the leaders are supported by huge throngs of people who need or want money and are willing to ignore their role (wittingly or unwittingly) or are blackmailed into compliance.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
A) The west just has fewer people. The most populous country in Europe - Germany - would be only the 10th most populous country in Asia. B) A substantial amount of people in Asia live in rural areas. In India, nearly 920M people live in rural areas. The lack of infrastructure in rural areas means that things can happen that never ever reach the local authorities. People can simply slip away without a trace. C) State power is weak outside of major population centers. Corruption is rife. Povery is rampant. Earning opportunities are limited. Combined, it means that criminals know they can get away with anything as long as they bribe the right people. D) A substantial percentage of Asian population lives under failed states (same for Africa). State power isn't just weak; it's absent. E) Asia is just way too large and geographically diverse. Easy to hide away illicit activity in a dense rainforest or deserted mountain than in wide open plains and farmland.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Thank you, very good points. Combining those factors probably makes for a perfect storm.
- lupire 4y ago
  "State power is weak" is a weird claim since the powerful states don't prevent trade with slavers. Powerful states like US and China run slavery operations directly. It's even explicitly enshrined in the US Constitution.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The US didn't become a powerful state until the Constitution was amended to ban slavery. The Confederacy, for example, was militarily and economically a very weak state. It couldn't even supply shoes to its soldiers. It was unable to pierce the blockade on them by the Union. And so on.
  - prottog 4y ago
    It's a far stretch to say that allowing slavery or involuntary servitude as a penalty for duly convicted criminal is somehow "enshrining" it.
pavlov 4y ago
Human trafficking is a real issue in the West. Restaurant workers and prostitutes may not end up outright killed, but the conditions can be close to slavery.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Is it a real issue? I hear it constantly from the right but I'd like to see some numbers
  - llamaimperative 4y ago
    > In 2020, 10,583 situations of human trafficking were reported to the U.S. National Human Trafficking Hotline involving 16,658 individual victims. Shocking as these numbers are, they are likely only a fraction of the actual problem. https://polarisproject.org/2020-us-national-human-trafficking-hotline-statistics/ https://polarisproject.org/2020-us-national-human-traffickin... To be clear though, what you’re hearing (or at least what I’m hearing) from the US right wing is not referring to this. It’s referring to a theory that specifically cultural elites are specifically trafficking children for sex. There’s no reason to believe this is a large issue, though obviously there were systemic failures in the whole Epstein ordeal that gave conspiracists a lot of ammunition. The majority of trafficking is of laborers, which the right wing generally opposes protections of, and immigrants, which again the right wing generally opposes easy paths to legal citizenship and legal protection for illegal immigrants wherever possible (leading victims to believe they cannot contact law enforcement). Having grown up in a US border state I strongly suspect labor trafficking is dramatically underreported because a lot of immigrant laborers don’t even know they’re being trafficked. They’re essentially told they have no rights in the US and that’s just how it is. The reality of course is that you have ~100% of the legal protection offered to citizens the moment you set foot on US soil. All of this applies equally to another large source of trafficking which is sex work. US right wing is fixated on the morality of sex work rather than the morality of building a system that rewards and enables coerced sex work.
    - xfitm3 4y ago
      As someone who had inside knowledge of the sex work industry the incident rate of trafficking was extremely low. Most trafficking was related to Asian gangs in LA, SF, NY. It's an anecdote, take it with a grain of salt.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> Hard to imagine it happening at that scale in the West. I think this idea is quite dangerous and reeks of superiority. It has happened before and it could happen again. Sister comment made a point about forced prostitution and human traficcing being common. I want to make a point that to get rid of this as a matter of policy, we've had revolutions and guillotines. To enforce this, we have well armed, strong goverments with long reach. The fact that this keeps happening in every area without a strong government -from failed states to international waters - undercuts libertarian argument quite a bit. Youd think they would move to somalia en masse and turn it into the promosed land
- logicchains 4y ago
  >The fact that this keeps happening in every area without a strong government -from failed states to international waters - undercuts libertarian argument quite a bit Myanmar is a hardcore communist military dictatorship, I'd hardly call that a weak government.
  - muststopmyths 4y ago
    Communist ? The communist party of Burma (CPB) would be surprised to learn that
  - lupire 4y ago
    Evil doesn't imply strong.
- luckylion 4y ago
  > It has happened before and it could happen again. Sure, I wasn't implying that it couldn't happen here, I'm just clumsy with words. I was trying to say it's hard to imagine it happening at similar scale _right now_, i.e. Danish fishing vessels buying slaves and throwing them overboard when they're too weak to continue working, in 2022. I'm aware of trafficking, forced prostitution and indentured servitude with work in nail salons etc, but as far as I understand, the scale is (currently) very different, and it's much less extreme (assuming there are no secret mass graves we'll find in the future).
- 4y ago
lupire 4y ago
Slavery is caused by one thing: imbalance of power between people. Whenever one entity or group gets too much power, slavery follows.
duxup 4y ago
Effective institutions, independent judiciary helps a great deal.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Reports like these make me so jaded and cynical about technology and all the supposed ills it cures. So much money goes into solving non-problems like 15-minute delivery or cryptocurrencies when such a huge swathe of the world still struggles with energy, security, and access to basic dignity.

barterr 4y ago
I’d say that’s more of a capitalism problem than a technology problem
- soggylaundry 4y ago
  well if you look at world history, it always has been like this -- look at all those proudly-written enslavements, crimes and massacres. But we're starting to grow out of it, and tech is helping us track down crimes that were near-impossible to track down.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    Very often tech is enabling these crimes. Monitoring and punishment of millions of people was much more difficult before.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      And exposure and transparency was much more difficult before too. A tool is a tool, how it is used is the important part.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      The Soviet Union had no trouble at all monitoring and punishing tens of millions of people. It also operated forced labor camps (gulags) on a vast scale.
- reitanqild 4y ago
  Actually, on average the rich countries that has diverged most from capitalism has been significantly worse. I'm leaving out the developing countries on purpose here: they may have had it even worse but it doesn't feel fair to blame them. Nazi Germany and Soviet/USSR (the whole time more or less) can't blame anyone else for the insane scale of human suffering that they created. Both are representatives of centrally planned economies where companies either don't exist in a western sense (Soviet), or only exist to serve the country (Germany).