Global Slavery Index 2014
globalslaveryindex.orgThe abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other".
And here's one more part of this: a great letter by a Southern pro-slavery philosopher, about 1830's, was written to a capitalist abolitionist Northern philosopher. And the pro-slavery owner said,
Look, we would be very happy to give up all our slaves if we had the same conditions you have up there. Because slave ownership is only the optimal economic choice under very specific land-ownership conditions.If you have not very many people on a lot of land, the only way you can get them to work for you is at the point of a gun. Because access to land means self-sufficiency. If, on the other hand, you have a lot of people, and you've got land title all tied up, they have no choice but to work for you for whatever pittance. So, frankly, I'd rather have it like you do, because you don't have to pay for them when they get sick. You don't have to pay for their food when they're infants. You don't have to pay for them in their old age. So, frankly, you can offer them whatever pittance you want, and if they don't take it, you'll hire somebody else.
It made a lot of sense to me. Access to land is everything.
And, by the way, land ownership doesn't exist. I don't own this land here. What actually happens is, my mom owns a piece of paper that we all agree means that she owns this land. But she doesn't own any land, Warehauser doesn't any land. Sierra Pacific doesn't own any land, the US government doesn't own any land. They have pieces of paper that we all agree mean that they own the land. But what there is, is there's land, and there's starving people, and there's people who are paying money to live on land that other people have pieces of paper that say that they own, but it's all a shared hallucination.
But taxes aren't right?
Taxes are a bit different from wage slavery or even slavery, and shouldn't be confused with them. Taxes and wage slavery, however, do have a mutually re-enforcing relationship.
Wage slavery is a system in which a person can only subsist by exchanging their labor for money - essentially forcing them to work for others for a living in exchange for means of subsistence.
Taxes, in a democracy at least, are intended to be merely a yearly collection to pay for products/services used in common with a state managed agency typically overseeing the apportionment of those funds.
However, if taxes are extracted through coercive means (as they are in most present-day states), then they can be viewed as coercing individuals into a choice between either wage slavery or poverty. In that way taxes and wage-slavery are two ends a coercive system.
Nonsense. we don't[1] have a debtor's prison in the USA and I believe most laws that criminalize a simple inability to pay would be unconstitutional by the 13 Amendment.
Now, this is a very fine legal line to walk, because intent (mens rea) to withhold taxes is indeed a crime. Failing to file any required paperwork may also be a crime in some situations. IF by some chance you cannot pay, but still file on time and explain the situation to the IRS, they will only be able to impose financial remedies. So you can certainly get some sort of payment plan, or wage garnishes, or liens on any property you own - but not jail time or forced labor.
In practice, of course, this applies to only a very small set of people. It is cleasrly a attempt to work around the moral issues to allow tax laws to exist. If slavery is the concern, tax law is way to minor of an issue. I suggest looking into the current trend of trying (and succeeding, to some degree) to bring back slavery in the form of prison labor. For-profit prisons are a bad enough idea, but allowing way-below-minimum-wage labor and a lack of oversight and regulation is creating a huge moral hazard.
[1] I realize that there are currently trying to reverse the current situation a bring back various forms of criminal penalties and/or a type of debtor's prison. While concerning, they have had only limited, local success so far.
The parent said:
>"if taxes are extracted through coercive means (as they are in most present-day states), then they can be viewed as coercing individuals into a choice between either wage slavery or poverty."
You never actually addressed the issue of coercion as a whole, you only addressed what happens when there is an 'inability to pay'; as you state:
>"So you can certainly get some sort of payment plan, or wage garnishes, or liens on any property you own - but not jail time or forced labor."
But you do not address what happens when one hides the money, in foreign accounts, or domestic locations. If one does either of these, they are subject to imprisonment, though it may not be called a 'debtor's prison', this is still coercion.
TLDR; If I demand money from you, under threat of confinement, it is coercion, whether or not you have the means to pay.
> under threat of confinement
In the area of taxes, nobody is making such a threat.
As I said above, "confinement" (jail) is the one thing that that would be the one thing that can't happen for only inability to pay.
> hides the money
See, that's not what I'm talking about. By attempting to hide what would otherwise be taxable money, you are committing a different crime, which is really a type of fraud (or possibly, if a court was involved, perjury).
After facing whatever penalty there is for fraudulently filling out tax forms[1], someone who evades taxes (any way) would still owe the outstanding back taxes.... which cannot result in further jail time.
So yes, the government will make your financial life hard if you fail to pay taxes. They can (and do) coerce your property very harshly. The government should only start using coercive force against you (instead of just your property) if there are other related crimes involved.
{ For the record: this is not legal advice, see a lawyer for better information. Especially see a lawyer before attempting some sort of scheme to move money around in the hopes of hiding taxes. That is getting harder and harder to pull off in the modern "big data" world and and clever analysis techniques[2] }
[1] note: lack of filling them out still counts, as the IRS simply files a substitute tax return in your place. Obviously, they will not be filling it out in your favor. Their minimal filing doesn't even include the "standard deduction". So
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Accounting_frau...
My apologies for not being clearer, but then again this honestly this strikes me as overly pedantic. By coercion I meant coercion in the broadest sense as anything designed to influence your behavior - eg induce pain or potential hardship so that paying taxes seems more desirable than not paying them. Therefore, while the legal classifications of the particular offenses may vary and be debatated ad nauseum, I don't think they detract from the fundamentally coercive, or even at least perceived coercive, reality underlying them.
I would agree that the interpretation being used here by the government (and others) is indeed waling a fine line. I see it as mainly a historical thing: guaranteeing at least <i>personal</i> liberty in a system that uses taxes was a huge improvement over what came before it. We should, of course, try to improve the situation even further in the future.
I jsut think the tax issue is somewhat less important than aquite a few of the other threats to freedom that currently exist. (the prison labor mentioned above being a good example. There are other concewrns, too, of course.
We are in total agreement here. Taxes are far less concerning to me (and honestly seem like a distraction) compared to any number of other more impactful and coercive systems in existence.
If one takes the trouble to define a modern tax system, you will see that there is no significant difference between it and the exactions imposed on a slave. One might distinguish between a democratically enacted tax and a slave's duties by the opportunity to vote, but Nozick made a strong case against that being a significant difference.[1]
If we are discussing situations similar or equivalent to slavery, I would be remiss if I failed to mention conscription. I have never been able to find a principled difference between conscription and slavery; if you can, please explain it to me.
except that you must make over a certain amount of money to qualify for income tax? if you're flat busted you're not paying any taxes besides incidental ones like sales. it's a really gross disingenuous argument to draw equivalences between the historical monstrosity of chattel slavery (the indignity of humans being reduced to property) and having an apportionment of your income siphoned for collective costs. at that point you're just saying that any form of social obligation is the same thing as not having legal standing as a human being
You are describing one specific implementation of the income tax. I have three arguments against your attempt at distinction; the first being that what you are proposing is essentially Nozick's 'gracious master' who takes a portion of your earnings (income tax), while retaining the ability to recall you (conscription or jury duty). Another point would be to simply point out that you are specifying 'income tax'; a poll tax with no cutoff is also possible, whereas I never limited my argument to this single implementation, and you have constructed a straw man. My third argument would be that you never took the trouble to define 'tax', and that if you did, you would see the fundamental similarity.
What you call a 'social obligation' seems to be a construct for the rationalization of abhorrent behavior, especially because the moneys collected via taxation have frequently been used to finance the oppression of a great number of people.
i form my views on material reality, not nebulous hypotheticals
I have used no nebulous hypothetical, only cited a noted philosopher, given the example of a real system of taxation, and pointed out your failure to address my argument. And I should point out that I am part of material reality, unless my existence is a hypothetical construct (which may very well be true).
I would call equating anyone who pays tax (including powerful CEOs of major companies) as having an experience 'not significantly different' to a slave as 'nebulously hypothetical'. Paying a bit of income tax and sales tax while holding the ability to move around, go off the grid, retire, or emigrate (amongst a vast range of options) is not even remotely similar to being lured to another country with lies, having your passport confiscated, and being forced into prostitution and having your every waking movement dictated.
The extent to which libertarians demand to be painted as hapless victims is incredibly frustrating.
Well, I would both dispute your characterization of what I said, and its nebulousness. I said:
>"If one takes the trouble to define a modern tax system, you will see that there is no significant difference between it and the exactions imposed on a slave."
Which is not hypothetical at all, and is significantly different from:
>"equating anyone who pays tax (including powerful CEOs of major companies) as having an experience 'not significantly different' to a slave"
I was brought into my home country as a helpless child of zero years of age (when I was born,) as are many people, and this system of laws and taxes was imposed on me at that time. I never had any input or decision-making power; please explain how I was in control (, which I presume to be the opposite of being a 'hapless victim').
I should add that I find your obsession with collectivism, and your belief in the moral authority of the state to be "incredibly frustrating", as do most people who agree with me, so at least we all have something in common.
please explain how I was in control
You're asking me to explain why you weren't in control as an infant? Can you explain to me how you were oppressed by taxes as an infant? You're trying to play the victim so explain yourself: where is this indentured infant servitude you're claiming you suffered under?
You're saying that the tax system has no significant difference between it and "the exactions imposed on a slave", which is basically saying that the experience is the same. It beggars belief that anyone that understands the experience of an actual slave would make this comparison; basically you're playing academic parlour tricks with the definitions of words.
your belief in the moral authority of the state
Where did I say that? I said taxation wasn't slavery. I said nothing about state moral authority (which state anyway? which kind of state? It's a silly, simplistic statement, as if there's only one kind of state). If you're going to complain about being misinterpreted, don't use a hydraulic ram to put words in other people's mouths.
>"You're asking me to explain why you weren't in control as an infant? Can you explain to me how you were oppressed by taxes as an infant? You're trying to play the victim so explain yourself: where is this indentured infant servitude you're claiming you suffered under?"
I am subject to my current tax and legal regimes only because I happened to be born in a state which has them. This is what I mean by my lack of choice as an infant.
>"It beggars belief that anyone that understands the experience of an actual slave would make this comparison; basically you're playing academic parlour tricks with the definitions of words."
The moral problem with slavery is not the physical conditions in which slaves are kept (though these have often been horrifically bad); the problem is the lack of liberty of the slave, which is why coercion is the essence of slavery. In many instances throughout history, there have been slaves who lived in better physical conditions than the average person, yet this does not mean the masters are absolved of their guilt.
I never "use[d] a hydraulic ram to put words in [your] mouth[]"; the 'moral authority of the state' is a classic set of terms used to describe a state's authority to compel a citizen to do things the citizen does not believe in. I do not believe I should be forced to do many of the things the state compels me to do, and I do not believe any state has any inherent moral authority to compel me to. You, on the other hand believe some state should be able to compel me to do things I do not believe in, hence you believe in the 'moral authority of the state' (, which does not mean that you believe every state or state agency is moral).
Libertarianism really is the 'only child' of the political world. They really want to have their cake and not share it. And you really still want to paint yourself as a victim; as a slave from birth. The problem with libertarians reappropriating words like this is that they water them down and stop real discussion from happening.
only because I happened to be born in a state which has them
Such a victim! My guess is that like most libertarians (and your handle plus being on HN), you're white, male, skilled, and with a good income (for the record, I am). You may not be, but the chances are that you are. If so, you're in one of the best-off demographics that has existed in the history of the world, and still you want to claim systematic victimhood. And yet, you're trying to identify with slaves, basking in the reflected anti-glory of the word.
Here's the rub: you have a choice. Particularly if you're in the US. You can go off the grid easily. You can live on public lands, moving around. You can support yourself hunting. Or bartering. You can just not engage in things that connect you to the government. Plenty of people do - witness the huge amount of illegal aliens the US has. Hell, you can even emigrate, no-one's stopping you. Millions of people voluntarily migrate every year, including out of developed nations into developing ones. Move to Vanuatu. Good weather. Happy people. Tiny government. No income tax (unless you're a landlord). You can live the libertarian dream of few government services, choosing to hire your own garbage collectors and whatnot. Other places like that exist all over the world.
But no, you want the lifestyle that taxes provide, but without having to pay taxes. So you join a political movement that has no hope of ever gaining real traction with its ideals, all so you can paint yourself as a victim to make yourself feel better. If you want to live without taxes, you can. Bam, your 'slavery' is over.
Libertarianism has great rhetorics and its members are skilled rhetoricians, but it has no answers for people who don't have plenty of privilege - which is most people, and which is why it'll never gain traction. Take the simple case of someone born with a congenital disease or subject to an accident that wasn't their fault. Most other philosophies would say "hey everyone, chip into the pot and that person can be helped", at least as an ideal. Libertarianism takes the "only child" approach of "sucks to be you. making me share is violent, and therefore immoral!". For all its rhetoric, libertarianism is very short on practical answers.
So no, modern taxation is not slavery or anything like it, and you weaken the impact of the word by saying it is. And you can escape the slavery you see yourself in - you are tacitly choosing to remain within it. However oppressed you think you were as an infant (somehow by the tax you weren't paying), you are now an adult, and you are choosing to remain within the system you despise yet can so easily remove yourself from.
I don't have any first hand experience, but I suspect someone who had actually been a slave would find your "slavery" extremely offensive.
The Economist had a pretty scathing tear-down of indicies in the issue week before last. One article specifically criticises the Global Slavery Index, another is more satirical, but still well worth a read:
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21631039-interna...
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21631025-learn-ruses-i...
Also worth listening to the More Or Less podcast on BBC r4 where they interview the Economist journalist involved.
Specifically they found that the NGO behind the slavery index had taken some countries where there was no data and simply assumed that country had as much slavery as a similar country (nearby, similar population etc)
Then they ranked countries. And named and shamed.
It was not good statistics.
I'm disappointed that the USA didn't get credit for the vast world historical illegal/undocumented immigration levels the government has been inviting for decades. Millions work for less than survival wages with no legal rights and the government does nothing to discourage migration or employers.
Simple employer sanctions have proven effective in ending this kind of migration but US gov't imposes almost none.
Heck, even legal professional immigrants (H/L visas) don't have the right to change employers or resign.
If we had credit for all those millions, we'd be at the top of the league table here. Time for a recount. (We're number one.)
The definition of slavery according to them:
Modern slavery involves one person possessing or controlling a person in such as a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal.
I would like to know what significantly means. Were African slaves in America "significantly deprived" or just "deprived".
Significant to me would include:
- inability to change employers
- inability to travel off site
- inability to make more money than the employer charges for fees/housing/...
- inability to quit
- fear of harm from employer
Similar to the workers in Abu Dhabi
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/22/abu-dhabi-migra...
"inability to make more money than the employer charges for fees/housing/..."
You could argue that America has this as a de facto result of real estate speculation. In any given region, real estate has a tendency to inflate until it sops up all excess earnings. Getting "above" real estate is only possible if you can save up a large down payment, etc., and get ahead of it... essentially like how old Roman slaves could purchase their freedom if they could save enough.
The announcement of feudalism's demise was premature.
You should qualify 'inability'. I would have thought that 'inability to change employers'. applies to millions of people particularly older ones where if they are sacked the chance of getting another job may be non-existent.
A somewhat more controversial 'inability' would be a visa where you must leave the country within 72 hours of your job terminating, although its impossible to sell your house in 72 hours and close the transaction without any preparation and the typical workplace hiring cycle is perhaps two months long. So technically you could quit or get fired and stay in country, if you had preexisting arrangements, but in practice...
This would be an interesting, strange, startup idea for a jobs website. I'll work for you part time, for 1/10th pay or minimum wage whichever is higher, although I donno when, and only until I get a real job. I suppose this is basically the temp industry, in a nutshell, unless a startup could do it much better, somehow.
I think your question is fair and don't understand why you were downvoted.
I also question their definition of slavery. Are US prison inmates forced into labor also slaves?
Slavery is not an easy thing to define.
It appears that inmates in modern US prisons are forced to work, though they are often incentivized to do work.[1]
Your question is still a good one though, and I would be interested to know whether penal labor would qualify as 'slavery', and whether the conditions of the facility, or the reason for incarceration would be taken into account in this judgement.
Something I don't understand about FPI is my sister in law's public school is FULL of FPI stuff although technically they can only sell to the feds. I believe there's a lot of "pass thru" and "non-surplus surplus sales" going on in the prison industrial complex. I suspect there's a lot of "Well, sorry about no federal funds cash this quarter, budget crunch and all that, but here's some nice FPI desks made by prison slave labor". The quality level of the carpentry work, both labor and materials, is usually pretty high compared to Chinese slave labor which always kinda surprises me. I wonder if folks closer to public schools than I am, see as much FPI as I do.
Agreed, what about communities where marriage is extremely strict or are arranged? -they essentially cannot leave -they must work or can be beaten -they cannot go out alone -money is often exchanged in the marriage process This meets all the listed criteria for slavery. No black and white (pun not intended, but it works) definition that can be used, so any quantification is subjective. On the subject of prison labor, just after the civil war many southern states used trumped up charges to essentially enslave the newly "free."
> Slavery is not an easy thing to define.
People also do a good job of rationalizing slavery into something else. The Swiss verdingkinder (child contracting) program existed until into the 1970's and some people still don't believe it was child slavery: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/opinion/slaverys-shadow-on...
African slaves count as slaves under this definition.
I'm not sure why you brought that up - that's not controversial.
They include significant to cover cases of bonded labour or trafficked workers. In theory a woman traffiked from one country to another and forced to work as a prostitute is free to go the that country's police forces to report the crime but we know that they don't actually have that freedom.
See also people who are transported to another country and have heir passports taken from them.
Here's a gruesome article about bonded labour in India.
Were African slaves in America "significantly deprived" or just "deprived".
Taken away from their homelands by force to a different continent, using a technology that they couldn't replicate to get back? Forced to work in specific locations, and if they ran away, they were hunted down and brought back? Sold as objects for labour?
Is this a serious question? How much more 'significant' does it need to be before it reaches your theoretical bar? What's the gray area that you see that means they might not be defined as slaves?
Oh, no, I guess I didn’t express myself properly. It is obvious that they were slaves. I was asking if the significant would actually be necessary in that case. And if it wouldn't be, what is significant implying in this definition? Does current slavery allow for more personal liberties that old fashion slavery.
http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/terminology/
Just in case people are wondering where you got that from.
An issue with problems like this, that are obviously bad, is that only positive examples are tested, or only examples that would increase the estimate of the scope of the problem. I doubt the 'Walk Free Foundation' has tested equally for negative examples, and would look for ways to lower their estimates (as one has to do to fit reality).
This claims 60,000 "enslaved" in the US, however many people would argue it's much more thanks to forced prison labor
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-unit...
Men, tho'. So no one cares.
I'm sceptical of the score. How did they calculate that?
Methodology here: http://d3mj66ag90b5fy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014...
The TLDR is: they surveyed broadly representative demographics of nine countries on whether any family members had ever been forced to work, and kept in that position by coercion. They also used some secondary sources for ten other countries.
They extrapolated the figures for the rest of the 167 countries based on averages of countries considered to have similar characteristics, with some largely subjective country-specific adjustments.
As an example, the score for China, which they note has few confirmed reports of widespread slavery was (average proportion of slaves in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan).9 + (average proportion of Qatar, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia).1
Worthy as the objective behind the research may be, it's difficult to understate how speculative these estimates and the percentages reported to a ludicrous number of decimal places actually are.
Today I learned there are 23 enslaved people in Iceland.
Figures for Iceland were actually extrapolated from figures for Britain. In all the index is pretty seriously flawed. Some countries are being ranked in the complete absence of any slavery data to justify a ranking.
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21631039-interna...
It's mindblowing that something so statistically illiterate gets published. There is no way they can have the data to distinguish 23 from 0 (or 50) to any degree of confidence without actually enumerating the victims.
So it's about damn time to free them. Then the next country, until we're done.
Twenty-three slaves in the country? They should publish their names.
Nice, we have 37k slaves in the Czech Republic.
I find it hard to believe that close to one percent of Russians are slaves.
I think there's a reason why they use the term enslavement rather than people being slaves. Enslavement implies modern slavery - which is far off from the chains and whips of a by-gone era. However it's still a form of slavery and quite a serious problem globally.