3 ms·

Are they using the same standards of comparison? There used to be a lot of people working for bare subsistence with no possible way of escape, even if they wer

by Eliezer 18y ago

Are they using the same standards of comparison? There used to be a lot of people working for bare subsistence with no possible way of escape, even if they weren't labeled slaves... maybe the standard could be whether someone is bought and sold, but at any rate one should use consistent standards over time.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
The article gives a definition right at the beginning: * A slave is a human being forced to work through fraud or threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence.* What makes you think they aren't being consistent with this definition? Note that tinkering with the definition is unlikely to change the conclusion, just because human population is so much larger than it used to be. As this World Population Clock points out, estimates of the total number of humans born since 50,000 BC are around 110 billion, and 6.7 billion are alive today. Seven percent of all the humans who have ever lived are alive now: http://www.worldometers.info/population/ http://www.worldometers.info/population/ Does this make modern slavery less of a moral outrage? Not really. Those slaves really exist. You can't ameliorate the suffering of a slave just by adding more non-slaves to the population at the same time.
- cabalamat 18y ago
  > A slave is a human being forced to work through fraud or threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. Say I employ someone for a week, then, come their payday I disappear without paying them. By the definition above, they're a slave. But while my behaviour would be dispicable, I don't think most people would call such a situation slavery. So I don't think the definition is a good one.
tptacek 18y ago
If anything, Skinner is pulling punches in this Foreign Policy article. Google: "Ramesh Garg" slave -surly; you'll get a particularly egregious Google Book excerpt from "A Crime So Monstrous", the book he wrote on the subject. Between the sale of Haitian children for $50, the barter of teen sex slaves for used cars in Romania, and the generations of quarry slaves in India, it seems like we can put aside the argument over whether we're talking about slaves. They're slaves. Let's move on.
- Eliezer 18y ago
  I'm not questioning that these are slaves. I'm wondering if the total slave population of previous generations would be higher if we counted all their slaves the same way, not just people who were explicitly labeled "slaves". Just wondering.

by Eliezer 18y ago

mechanical_fish 18y ago

The article gives a definition right at the beginning: * A slave is a human being forced to work through fraud or threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence.* What makes you think they aren't being consistent with this definition? Note that tinkering with the definition is unlikely to change the conclusion, just because human population is so much larger than it used to be. As this World Population Clock points out, estimates of the total number of humans born since 50,000 BC are around 110 billion, and 6.7 billion are alive today. Seven percent of all the humans who have ever lived are alive now: http://www.worldometers.info/population/ http://www.worldometers.info/population/ Does this make modern slavery less of a moral outrage? Not really. Those slaves really exist. You can't ameliorate the suffering of a slave just by adding more non-slaves to the population at the same time.

cabalamat 18y ago
> A slave is a human being forced to work through fraud or threat of violence for no pay beyond subsistence. Say I employ someone for a week, then, come their payday I disappear without paying them. By the definition above, they're a slave. But while my behaviour would be dispicable, I don't think most people would call such a situation slavery. So I don't think the definition is a good one.

tptacek 18y ago

If anything, Skinner is pulling punches in this Foreign Policy article. Google: "Ramesh Garg" slave -surly; you'll get a particularly egregious Google Book excerpt from "A Crime So Monstrous", the book he wrote on the subject. Between the sale of Haitian children for $50, the barter of teen sex slaves for used cars in Romania, and the generations of quarry slaves in India, it seems like we can put aside the argument over whether we're talking about slaves. They're slaves. Let's move on.

Eliezer 18y ago
I'm not questioning that these are slaves. I'm wondering if the total slave population of previous generations would be higher if we counted all their slaves the same way, not just people who were explicitly labeled "slaves". Just wondering.