• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Guardian: "Human life is more expendable" why slavery has never made more money

https://www.theguardian.com/global-...endable-why-slavery-has-never-made-more-money

Slave traders today make a return on their investment 25 to 30 times higher than their 18th- and 19th-century counterparts.

Siddharth Kara, a slavery economist and director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Business School, has calculated that the average profit a victim generates for their exploiters is $3,978 (£3,030) a year. Sex trafficking is so disproportionately lucrative compared to other forms of slavery that the average profit for each victim is $36,000.

In his book Modern Slavery, to be published in October, Kara estimates that sex trafficking accounts for 50% of the total illegal profits of modern slavery, despite sex trafficking victims accounting for only 5% of modern slaves.

Kara based his calculations, shared exclusively with the Guardian, on data drawn from 51 countries over a 15-year period, and from detailed interviews with more than 5,000 individuals who have been victims of slavery.

The first move to eradicate slavery was made in 1833, when the British parliament abolished it, 26 years after outlawing the trade in slaves. Nonetheless, at least twice as many people are trapped in some form of slavery today as were traded throughout the 350-plus years of the transatlantic slavery industry.

Experts believe roughly 13 million people were captured and sold as slaves by professional traders between the 15th and 19th centuries. Today, the UN’s International Labour Organisation believes at least 21 million people worldwide are in some form of modern slavery.

“It turns out that slavery today is more profitable than I could have imagined,” Kara said. “Profits on a per slave basis can range from a few thousand dollars to a few hundred thousand dollars a year, with total annual slavery profits estimated to be as high as $150bn.”

Worth reading the rest of the article.
 

norm9

Member
So messed up. That's an insane amount of money you can make, though you have to be the scum of the earth to actually to a part of this.
 
Nonetheless, at least twice as many people are trapped in some form of slavery today as were traded throughout the 350-plus years of the transatlantic slavery industry.

Experts believe roughly 13 million people were captured and sold as slaves by professional traders between the 15th and 19th centuries. Today, the UN’s International Labour Organisation believes at least 21 million people worldwide are in some form of modern slavery.
!!
 
With this kind of profit one can see why slavery isn't going anywhere. it's like poaching endangered species...how the hell can we really stop it? It makes too much money.
 
With this kind of profit one can see why slavery isn't going anywhere. it's like poaching endangered species...how the hell can we really stop it? It makes too much money.

Get caught facilitating slavery, lifetime imprisonment.

I'd guess most of the time the criminals get away completely free, since its so hard to prove, get the victims to testify, show everyone involved, catch them before they move to a new country, etc.

I mean even in the USA the private prison complex more or less treats prisoners as near slave labor. I remember reading some article that in 2015 the two private prison businesses had around 1m inmates, paid those 1m inmates $40k in wages for work they did (TOTAL, not each), and reported a profit of $60m on the work the prisoners did. Show me any other business that lets you turn $40k into $60m in one year, I don't think even drug cartels have that kind of margin.

And its not just the USA, there are slavery/indentured systems all over the world. Minerals mined in Africa, electronics assembled in China, clothing stitched in Asia, fruits and vegetables farmed in South America, everyone in North Korea, etc and thats all completely ignoring sex trade. The entirety of human history is really built on a few enjoying a good life while most people suffer and having to ignore it because the alternative means giving up your lifestyle.
 

Pau

Member
Every single person will have come into contact with a victim of trafficking without noticing it.
I don't know how much educating people on what slavery looks like nowadays and in our own communities can help these people, but it's a start. At least in the United States we are taught to think of slavery as something that's purely in the past.
 
Top Bottom