Slavery

Slavery is a term that is used to describe the control of a person or persons against their will. Coercion, violent enforcements and other related conditions are all considered to be relevant to the topic of slavery. Slavery has been evident throughout many regions of the world since nearly the dawn of time. What many people do not realize is that there are modern slaveries and exploitation of humans still evident in the world today. Many people believe that slavery ended with America’s Civil War. This is simply not true. Modern-day slavery is a real concept that involves real people who are forced into submission against their will. There are currently an estimated 2.7 Million people throughout the world who are considered to be modern-day slaves. These people are mainly children who are forced to work and endure conditions of slavery. During 2003, child slavery began its ascent and has been on the rise every since.

In the past, slaves were typically those who bore a different nationality or race from those who enslaved them. In many cases acts of intermarriage, liberty and the right to own one’s own freedom have caused slaves and slave owners to merge throughout the world. Those societies that are characterized by poverty, overpopulation and cultural or technological inadequacies are typically exporters of slaves to countries that are more developed. Most slaves today are rural people who have been forced to move to larger cities by Second Hand Cars or who are purchased in their rural areas and then sold into slavery to slave owners in larger cities.

Slavery is a matter of economics. People who are born with poor birthrights in society have been forced to seek mercy from those with a better birthright or they have been forced to provide service to those in a more powerful position.
According to Free the Slaves, which is an advocacy group, there are currently 27 million people in the world who are considered to be slaves, instead of the 2.7 million who are considered to be slaves by the British Anti-Slavery Society. Prices for modern day slaves can range from $40 in Mali for young adult males who are sought for labor purposes, to more than $1,000 in Thailand for young females who are proven to be free from HIV.

These young women are used in brothels. These prices are typically paid either to the person becoming the slave or to their parents. This is the lowest price that ha ever been paid for slaves in terms of raw labor. The price of a male slave in America during the 1800s would have been approximately $1,000 in that time period’s currency. That would be the equivalent of approximately $38,000 in today’s currency. Those figures tend to show that slaves today cost only one one-thousandth of what they cost over 150 years ago. As a direct result of this, the economics of slavery has become desolate. The yield of profit per year for purchasing slaves is more than eight-hundred percent on average. This is a major contrast to the five percent per year that was evident during the colonial times. Combined with the higher potential to lose a slave by having them stolen, escape or granted freedom, and you get the yield of what are called disposable people or those who are exploited for a short time and then simply discarded, such as when prostitutes are thrown into the streets to die from HIV or those who are forced to work in seriously dangerous conditions like mines.

Again, many people throughout the world simply assume that slavery ended with the abolition movement. Slavery is alive and well in many areas of the world. The quest for total abolition is an ongoing cause and millions of people each year are forced into a world where they have no freedom and no right to defend themselves against those who enslave them..