For context, there are around 40 million people living in some form of slavery today, around four times the number of people who were sold in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, so it is by no means a solved problem.

Most people in slavery today live in Asia and the Middle East, but there are pockets in Africa where it is common too.

Modern slaves are sold for as little as $10-$100 and are therefore often considered disposable by their perpetrators. Approx 70% are women and 25% children.

Slavery is illegal everywhere in the world but enforcement is lax or non-existent in some countries, notably Libya and Yemen.

Relative to population, that’s probably the lowest it’s ever been. Obviously the correct number is zero, but it’s an unfortunate fact of life that bad stuff tends to scale with population just like good stuff.

Yes, but unlike other bad stuff, like homicides, this issue isn’t homogeneously distributed over the world. It’s disproportionately concentrated to a small number of countries and regions, that for various reasons and to various degrees tacitly condone it.

Homicide is pretty concentrated too. The rate varies 100x or more between the best and the worst countries, and there’s enormous variation within countries too.

I’m not sure it’s as extreme as you suggest. Looking up stats on slavery in different countries, there are definitely some extreme outliers, but they don’t account for that much of the global total. And by far the worst offender is North Korea, which is never mentioned in these discussion. I also have no idea how accurate these figures are, but the focus on places like Libya doesn’t seem like an honest assessment of the situation.

In any case, I’m not sure how this matters. I guess it would influence how you fight it. If it’s concentrated in a few countries then you’d want pressure on those governments specifically. But in terms of how bad the problem is, I don’t see that it really matters how geographically spread out it is.

Yes, thank you, that was quite obvious.

My point, in case it somehow wasn’t obvious, is that we shouldn’t ignore the past just because problems continue.

The people that are given the most negative attention are those that have admitted guilt. The key to success in the liberal order is to shrug it off and chalk it up to cultural differences.

Case in point: slavery in the US prior to the Civil War is widely acknowledged to be wrong and gets lots of negative attention. Slavery in the US today is barely acknowledged to even exist and gets little negative attention.

It’s funny how people who want to deflect away from discussing the Atlantic slave trade by bringing up modern slavery always mention countries like Libya, and not the US. I imagine it’s worse in Libya, but “why focus on the US’s past when slavery is alive and well here in the present” would hit a lot closer to home and would probably be a lot easier to fix.

Unfortunately a significant fraction of the US is entirely okay with people (mostly black people) being turned into indentured servants for our prison system. They have zero appetite for prison reform, justice reform, police reform, etc, and would much rather we all sit down and shut up.

I am completely against private prisons. Providing there are legitimate reasons for someone to be in prison, how is it wrong to make them at least cover their own costs?

Start by explaining why slavery would ever not be wrong.

Are you against court-ordered community service?

It seems borderline, given that the person has a choice of when and where to perform it. But I don’t want to be near any borderlines here, so, yes. Morality aside, it seems very ineffective both in terms of punishment/rehabilitation and for getting value out of the person.

Well we're talking about morality, so is it morally wrong? I'm fairly sure you'd say conscription is morally wrong, but is jury duty morally wrong? I'm not sure a government can continue to exist without forcing people to work in one form or another.

As I said, it’s borderline.

Jury duty is an interesting question. I’m not a huge fan of the jury system, although it may be the best of bad alternatives. Maybe there’s no good way around this one.

I get that you’re trying to trip me up (and succeeding a bit), but penal labor isn’t difficult or borderline or anything like that. It’s a straightforward “we can make money by forcing that person to work, and it’s not illegal.” There’s no justification beyond, they’re a criminal so they deserve it. Obviously, criminal punishment has to involve violation of certain rights, but I don’t see any reason for it to involve violating this right besides liking money and wanting more of it.

Well I've already mentioned covering costs as a reason. Anything beyond that seems like a slippery slope.

You seem to think that forcing anyone to work is a slippery slope, and considering where we are now, there probably is some merit to that idea.

“Covering costs” is just a different way to say “we like money and we can get some by enslaving that person.” It’s not a moral justification for anything.

> how is it wrong to make them at least cover their own costs?

Very wrong. Prison provides a service to society. We pay for that service out of our own pockets for our own benefit.

This should be true whether you think prison should be about punishment or reform. This should be true regardless of who runs the prison.

If society is unwilling to pay the costs to segregate the population into guilty and not-guilty fractions, they should shut down the prisons and see how expensive that gets.

Trying to offset the costs of that service through literal slavery is insane, immoral, and not in anyone's interest. No crime validates being turned into a slave. Someone being in prison has already been stripped of their freedom, and going further to lease them out as underpriced labor not only fucks with the labor market, but it should not be considered "just" punishment when PRISON is supposed to be the punishment.

Making prisoners pay $2 for fifty cent ramen is just as unethical. If you are unwilling to pay the price for a society without criminals, imprison less people, make fewer criminals, or deal with the consequences. Functioning society has costs. Trying to escape those in such cruel ways is childish, selfish, and stupid.

The OP posted a wiki article. I can't find a wiki article for slavery in the US in the present. The one on indentured servitude is about the past too.

We use euphemisms for it and Wikipedia follows along. The relevant articles are:

For the illegal stuff: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_the_Uni...

And the legal variety: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_St...